The Escambia County Commission voted 4-1 Wednesday night to authorize placing the superintendent referendum on the August 18, 2026 primary election ballot, the same ballot that will carry partisan primary races for governor, legislative seats, and local offices. The vote follows a 3-2 decision by the Escambia County School Board to request primary placement over the alternative of the higher-turnout November general election.
Commissioner Lumon May cast the dissenting vote. His objection was direct: the primary draws significantly fewer voters than the general election, and the voters who do show up skew older and more conservative. Moving the referendum to August, May argued, effectively determines the outcome before it's asked. "That seems to be, you know, politically motivated to put it in the primary where we have the least amount of votes," May said during the meeting. "I think that if there's ever an opportunity to eliminate voter suppression, give every person an opportunity to vote, we should give it at the chance that allows for the most people to come out."
The school board's vote to request primary placement was also not unanimous. Board members Carissa Bergosh and David Williams voted against the resolution. Williams's objection cut to the structural contradiction: the board had spent three years praising the appointed superintendent, Keith Leonard. Voting to put the model back on the ballot was hard to reconcile. "We can't have it both ways," Williams said at the school board meeting.
The 2018 referendum passed by the thinnest margin in the question's long history. Escambia voters have been asked to choose between elected and appointed superintendents six times. All five earlier attempts to move to the appointed model failed. The 2018 result, 50.36 percent to 49.64 percent, was close enough that a moderately different turnout environment could have produced the opposite outcome. That history is precisely why the choice of ballot timing matters.
The Florida counties that currently use appointed superintendents are concentrated in South Florida's larger, more urban counties. Proponents of returning to the elected model, led on the school board by District 5 member Tom Harrell, argue that Escambia's political culture, values and community expectations are better served by direct voter accountability than by a board-controlled search process. Harrell has been direct: he thinks the voters want this, and he wants them to have the chance to say so.
The counter-argument is equally direct: appointed superintendents produce longer tenures and more stable district leadership. Tim Smith's firing after 33 months was an outlier, not a structural inevitability. The appointed model, on average, produces national-search candidates with more diverse experience than local elected officials. The evidence on student outcomes under elected versus appointed superintendents is mixed.
What is not mixed is the political calculus behind the August placement. Primary elections in Florida are closed, only registered party members vote in most races. That eliminates a significant share of independent and no-party-affiliated voters who would otherwise participate in November. The county attorney's office confirmed it reached out to the Florida Attorney General's Office on whether commissioners could place the question on the general ballot instead, but had received no response as of the meeting.
The referendum, if it passes in August, would mean voters elect a superintendent beginning with the November 2028 general election. Keith Leonard, the current appointed superintendent, is expected to retire before that cycle. The 2028 election would effectively open a race for an office that hasn't been elected since 2018. Qualifying would begin in mid-2028.