5 Westside candidates compete for District 6 Duval School Board seat

Five candidates are vying for the opportunity to represent Jacksonville’s far Westside on the Duval County School Board. 

The race is the third-most expensive of more than 200 school board races across Florida; the District 6 candidates have raised a combined $208,000. It could also have one of the most ideologically influential outcomes. 

Current board Chair Charlotte Joyce has held the seat since 2018. She was reelected in 2022 and is now term-limited. She’s running for Jacksonville City Council next year.

District 6 has changed since Joyce last won the seat. Under the old map, District 6 Republicans slightly outnumbered Democrats, and 62% of voters were white. Now, Democrats slightly outnumber Republicans, and just 47% are white.

(The change came after civil rights advocates including the local NAACP successfully sued to get the city’s gerrymandered redistricting tossed and replaced with their own map.) 

The candidates

In recent years, Florida school board elections have garnered attention from high-level political players like Gov. Ron DeSantis and the conservative parental-rights advocacy group Moms for Liberty. 

In 2022, more than 80% of the 30 candidates DeSantis endorsed won, including Duval County District 2’s April Carney. In 2024, his success rate fell to about 50% statewide — though all but one of his Jacksonville picks won their races.

Their wins gave Duval’s School Board a strong conservative majority and a voting bloc that mostly sticks together on culture-war issues. 

This year, unlike the two previous election cycles, DeSantis has not endorsed any school board candidates statewide. Moms for Liberty has endorsed a handful of candidates, but none in Duval County. 

In District 6, though, three of the five candidates are registered Republicans and are leaning into their conservatism.

‘The trust has just been broken’: Lindsey Denmark

Lindsey Denmark, 41, is a real estate agent. She says she’s “watched lots of families choose other school districts over Duval” over the years and thinks violence in schools is negatively impacting public perception of the district.

“Whenever we have strong schools, we have strong community for sure,” Denmark says. “That’s really why I decided to run.”

Anecdotally, she says fights and other incidents make her hesitant to send her own child to the district’s schools. She and her husband homeschool their child. 

“I would love my student, my son, to be able to go back into public school, and just hearing from a lot of families, they want their kids to be able to go back into public school. A lot of times it’s easier. The transportation’s easier. 
It’s closer,” Denmark says. “There’s a lot of benefits there, but the trust has just been broken.”

She says with “stronger discipline, consistent consequences and some curriculum changes,” parents will feel more confident choosing DCPS. 

“I want to make sure that our families can trust the district, and I want to be a voice for those families that maybe have pulled their kids or are considering pulling their kids,” she says. “Really just stand for those families and build that bridge back — hold our teachers, our administrators accountable, stand on our code of conduct to make sure there’s consistency in our discipline.”

While acknowledging that the state Board of Education sets curriculum, Denmark says she would lobby for a curriculum that includes “character and virtue” lessons akin to the classical education approach often championed by conservatives.

“I think all of that could be woven into our curriculum a lot more,” Denmark says. “I just think that we need to be sure that we’re not getting personal opinions and ideologies from our teachers — or from other students — that are being brought out into the classroom and being taught in that way. I think we need to stick to the basics — make sure we’re sticking to the curriculum and teaching the basics of what our students need to be learning.”

‘We gotta do a better job of keeping our kids safe’: Clarence James

Clarence “CJ” James, 54, is a sergeant with the Duval County School Police and a retired Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office lieutenant. School safety is at the top of his list of priorities.

“I deal with the critical incidents in the schools every day,” James says. “
I see what goes on in our schools. And we’ve got to do a better job in getting the disruptive behavior and violence out of our schools.” 

He believes private schools and charter schools do a better job of curbing violence.

“People know what goes on in the public schools…but they don’t know how to address it,” James says. “And that’s why they’re snatching their kids out of public schools to send them to private and charter schools now that you have school choice and you can use vouchers and stuff like that.”

James says private and charter schools have fewer incidents “because they don’t tolerate that type of behavior, they’ll send them back to their regular schools.”

As privately operated public schools, charters are included in districts’ tallies of incidents. However, charters are not required to allow all students to enroll — unlike traditional public schools. Private schools are not required to report these kinds of statistics, and they’re also not required to offer enrollment to all students.

James, who has faced criticism in recent weeks for his campaign’s use of AI-generated images, blames social media and “fatherless homes” as driving factors behind student discipline problems. He says most violent incidents at schools have some kind of social media component.

“They’re on social media, they’re boosting it up, creating conflict,” James says. “
I mean, kids are glued to those cell phones.”

The violence makes it harder to retain teachers, he says, especially when surrounding districts don’t have the same problem. He says he supports “putting discipline back in the classrooms” and accountability for students and parents.

James, a Riverside High School graduate, has children who graduated from — or still attend — the district’s traditional schools. Joining the School Board and leaving the district’s police force would net him a pay cut of $30,000, he says, but he “has a passion for it” and is “able to do it.” His campaign filings show he receives a pension from JSO.

“What inspired me is that we gotta do a better job of keeping our kids safe,” James says. “And then we also need to do a better job of spending our taxpayers’ dollars.”

‘Step up and fight’: Michelle Petty

Michelle Petty, 46, is the only candidate in the District 6 race to have qualified through petitions instead of writing a check. She’s a paralegal and a notary, and a long-time volunteer at the traditional public schools her children attend. 

She says she decided to run after current District 6 rep Charlotte Joyce approached her with the idea. (Joyce later gave her official endorsement to Denmark.)

“I feel like I can make a big difference in our schools,” Petty says. “I’ve seen things that work and that don’t work. And I am willing to step up and fight and help improve our schools and make them better.”

In responses Petty submitted for a Jacksonville Today voter guide survey, she said “public schools remain the backbone of our community.” 

“I support parents’ right to choose the educational setting that best fits their child,” Petty wrote. “As choice expands, DCPS must adapt by improving student achievement, partnering with parents, ensuring safe schools and using taxpayer dollars wisely.”

In 2021, Petty and several other parents sued Duval Schools over its COVID-19 mask mandate. 

DCPS officials said they issued the mask requirement because 11 district employees had died and COVID cases surged as school started. Petty says she sued because her daughters’ health was impacted adversely by wearing masks.

“I do not want to be that person that causes division, and that was not my intent with that lawsuit,” Petty says. “
It was just me, standing up and fighting for what I thought was an injustice against our children.”

As a board member, she says she would work to represent everyone fairly, even those who don’t agree with her. 

“I am really good about soaking in as much information as I can, and I want to know what both sides think and feel about everything,” Petty says. “I try to make my decision not based off my own thoughts and feelings and perceptions, but the gathering of all of that information and data and looking at it from all different sides and perspectives to see what would be in the best interest of everyone.”

‘I want to come in with the solutions’: Robert Stafford

Robert Stafford, 72, is a retired logistics engineer who already spends much of his free time in service of the school district. 

Professionally, he specialized in “acquisition logistics” for the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of the Navy, and so planned sophisticated systems and complex projects. He sees that as an asset on the School Board.

“I have expertise that current board members don’t have,” Stafford says. 

He’s currently the NAACP’s representative on the district’s Citizen Oversight Committee — the body that monitors how DCPS spends its revenue from a half-penny sales tax. In that role, he says he’s pushed district leaders to more carefully evaluate construction projects. (“We were paying too much,” he says.)

He points to the newly rebuilt Ribault High School — which opened last year and cost more than $500 a square foot to build — and says the district overpaid by $50 million. 

“And that’s why I’m running for school board,” he says. “I mean, we just need that — I won’t say expertise — but we need someone with that experience.”

A Raines High School grad, Stafford went to Florida A&M University. After graduating with a degree in biology, he was commissioned as an officer in the Navy. Stafford’s wife spent 43 years as a teacher, most of it in Duval.

He wants the district to invest in its teachers through creating more opportunities for professional development and more effectively engaging nonprofits. 

“’I’m very passionate about this,” Stafford says. “I’m not coming in with an agenda. I want to come in with the solutions.”

Tammyette Thomas

Tammyette Thomas, 50, is also running. She didn’t respond to Jacksonville Today’s interview invitations. 

Who can vote

Because Florida school board elections are nonpartisan, the winner could be named on Aug. 18 — if one of the five gets more than 50% of the total vote. Otherwise, the two candidates with the most votes will continue on to a runoff in November’s general election. 

Also because the elections are nonpartisan, all registered voters in districts 2, 4 and 6 can vote. 

Early voting in Duval County starts Friday, Aug. 7.

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This story was produced in partnership with nonpartisan news organizations and universities across the state working to provide information about the 2026 elections. Learn more about the Florida Elections Reporting Partnership at floridaelections.org.