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There are only two candidates in the race for Palm Beach County School Board, District 4. That means it will be decided on August 23rd, unlike the other school board races where there will likely be a second vote in November.
The incumbent is School Board member Erica Whitfield who says she'd give the board a "B" grade for its handling of the pandemic.
"I think we did better than many organizations, but I still think families were upset. They felt unheard during that time so I don't think that I can give us an A."
Whitfield defends the board's move to defy state orders regarding giving parents the option on whether their kids wore masks.
"We knew the fact that if we did not require masks in our schools we would lose a lot of our teachers. They had already said that they were gonna leave. They would not come back. They would not work in our buildings if the kids were not masked. They were very afraid."
It's something her challenger, Angelique Contreras, has been very outspoken about.
She showed up at several school board meetings, where she's also been vocal about the use of the word "equity" in the school district's mission statement.
"So our school district mission is equity-embedded. We also hired a chief equity officer (Keith Oswald), which makes $205,000 a year to promote the diversity, equity and inclusion within our school district."
Contreras wants to abolish that position and get the word out of the mission statement. Her family is from Cuba and she blames "equity" for what she calls the "plague" that country fell to.
Contreras calls herself passionate about the following:
"I believe that a child's education should be free of anti-American concepts such as the promotion of equity instead of our constitutionally-guaranteed right to equality."
We asked Whitfield if Critical Race Theory has been in local classrooms.
"No, there's no CRT being taught in our schools. There is some questions about very very small instances of maybe a teacher said something but even most of the examples that people come up with when they try to point to CRT in our schools are from out of state, they're from other areas."
Whitfield has been on the record as being against the Parental Rights in Education law. She says nobody was ever teaching sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and the legislation sent the wrong message to some students.
"I feel like that 'Don't Say Gay' moniker that got added to it was also inappropriate and I feel like one of the things that really happened when that happened is that the students in the LGBT community felt very scared and they felt like they were being attacked. And I'm a big supporter of the LGBT community. I always have been."
The moniker was a false nickname for the bill, which had nothing to do with saying the word "gay."
While Whitfield says it's her goal to be the most accessible school board member, Contreras says she has been anything but that.
"Because I'm willing to listen to the parents, the stakeholders and individuals that have felt unheard for the past eight years and underrepresented by Erica Whitfield."
The incumbent, meanwhile, accuses her challenger of being too political.
"As a school board member I have worked really hard to keep politics out of the school, just have a good education for every single person in the school system. I think that everybody deserves a good education, it doesn't matter which direction you lean."
Her challenger, however, says this is what she's all about.
"I'm passionate about ensuring that our children have an opportunity to develop to their fullest potential so that they may thrive as independent self-sufficient adults in our community."
Both candidates also speak about school safety in the audio players above.