Leon County School Board in Tallahassee, Florida

The Leon County School Board is the five-member elected board that runs the public schools of Tallahassee and the rest of Leon County. Florida law gives it broad authority: under Florida Statutes 1001.32, district school boards shall operate, control, and supervise all free public schools in their respective districts, and may exercise any power not expressly prohibited by the State Constitution or general law. In practice the board holds the Leon County Schools budget hearings each September and decides which school tax questions go to Leon County voters.

The day-to-day work belongs to the superintendent. The same statute vests the administration and management of the schools in the district school superintendent as the secretary and executive officer of the district school board. The district is run from offices at 2757 West Pensacola Street in Tallahassee, and its half-penny page counts 44 school campuses, from Chaires Elementary and Bond Elementary to Killearn Lakes Elementary, Apalachee Elementary and the Woodville School, along with six high schools: Chiles, Godby, Leon, Lincoln, Rickards and SAIL.

Members are elected countywide but must live in the area they represent. Florida Statutes 1001.36 requires each district to be divided into at least five residence areas, numbered one to five and as nearly equal in population as practicable, and bars boundary changes in the 270 days before a general election. Under Florida Statutes 1001.361, the election of members must be by vote of the qualified electors of the entire district in a nonpartisan election. A voter in Killearn Lakes and a voter in Woodville therefore see the same Leon County School Board races on the ballot.

Terms are staggered four-year terms, so the board never turns over all at once. The district's own pages list the District 1, District 3 and District 5 terms as 2022 to 2026 and the District 2 term as 2024 to 2028, which put three seats on the 2026 ballot and two on the 2024 ballot. In the August 2024 nonpartisan primary, the Tallahassee Democrat reported, District 2 member Rosanne Wood won re-election with 76% of the vote.

The board picks its own leaders. Florida Statutes 1001.371 requires the board to organize in November of each year by electing a chair; it may elect a vice chair, and the superintendent acts ex officio as the secretary. A minimum of five members is set by Florida Statutes 1001.34, and each must be a resident of the residence area from which she or he is elected. Leon County Schools also seats a student school board member each year, drawn from a Leon County high school.

The Leon County Schools website lists five members by district as of October 2026. District 1 is Alva Swafford Smith, term 2022 to 2026. District 2 is Rosanne Wood, term 2024 to 2028. District 3 is Darryl Jones, the board's vice chair, term 2022 to 2026. District 4 is Laurie Lawson Cox. District 5 is Dr. Marcus Nicolas, the chair, term 2022 to 2026. The superintendent is Rocky Hanna. Last verified: October 9, 2026, on the Leon County Schools website (leonschools.net).

Because three of the five terms on the district site end in 2026, the membership of the Leon County School Board can change after the November 2026 general election, and the chair and vice chair are chosen again at the November organization meeting.

The superintendent is the chief executive of Leon County Schools. Florida Statutes 1001.49 lists the general powers: to exercise general oversight over the district school system, to advise and counsel the board on all educational matters and recommend action, to approve operational policies through authority delegated by the board, and to prepare rules and minimum standards for the board to adopt and then see that they are carried out.

In Leon County the superintendent is chosen by voters, not hired by the board. WFSU reported in December 2016 that Florida is one of only three states where candidates campaign for the superintendent's office instead of applying for it. The question of switching has come up: in May 2015 the Leon County School Board briefly floated and then dropped the idea of an appointed superintendent, and Hanna said in December 2016 that he would step aside and apply if Leon County voters ever chose an appointed system. Unlike the nonpartisan board races, the superintendent race in Leon County runs through party primaries; the Tallahassee Democrat reported Hanna won the Democratic primary in August 2024.

Hanna is a Tallahassee native. His district biography says he graduated from Leon High School in 1982, began teaching in 1989, taught at Godby and Lincoln, earned a master's degree at FSU in 1999, and was named principal of Leon High School in 2005, serving until 2012. WFSU reported that he won the superintendent race in November 2016 with more than half of the vote, and in November 2020 that he secured 30,000 more votes than his challenger.

Leon County Schools is getting smaller and its buildings are getting older. Board member Alva Smith told the Capital Tiger Bay Club in March 2026 that the budget had gone from $667 million in 2023 to about $647 million in 2025-26, and that enrollment had fallen from around 31,000 or 32,000 students to around 30,000. The district's half-penny page gives the average age of Leon County Schools buildings as 35 years. In February 2026, WFSU reported the board was facing a $12 million budget shortfall the following year and weighing a sales tax increase or a property tax millage increase, either of which would have to go before voters.

Two 2026 proposals came out of that work. The first renews the half-cent school sales tax, which the district says produced about $400 million from 2012 to 2027 and is projected to raise approximately $480 million if renewed. The second is a millage referendum: an additional 1.0 mill projected to generate approximately $29.3 million a year, about 90 percent of it for employee pay, with an average teacher raise of $6,000 and support staff raises averaging $3,000. The district reports that Leon County Schools ranks 47th in Florida for average teacher salary and projects a move to about 17th if voters approve.

The superintendent had floated a different route a year earlier. In September 2025, WFSU reported that Hanna wanted to double the half-penny sales tax to a full penny instead of raising property taxes, noting that the half-penny generated around $31 million a year and that much of it came from people who live outside Leon County. That plan needed approval from the Legislature before Leon County voters could see it, a reminder that the board's taxing power in Tallahassee runs through state law.

The board's most consequential decisions have shaped where Tallahassee children go to school. A 2017 WFSU Perspectives program marked 50 years since the last segregated Leon County public school closed its doors: the old all-Black Lincoln High School in Frenchtown. The same program noted that Rickards High School admitted its first three African American students in 1965. The scale of the job has grown since then. In September 2018, WFSU reported, the Leon County School Board passed a $531 million budget for the 2018-19 school year, including a raise in the minimum wage for district workers from $9.50 to $11 an hour; by 2025-26 Smith put the budget at about $647 million, for a district that runs every public school from Frenchtown to the county line.