Shakeup in Manatee County School Board race as candidate switches to city council bid

Two big changes have shaken up the race for a seat on the Manatee County School Board.

Harold Byrd Jr., a longtime member of the Bradenton City Council, filed to run for the District 2 School Board seat, a position held by Charlie Kennedy since 2014.

The councilman’s would-be opponent, David Levin — who spent 20 days in jail and two years on probation for hacking the Lee County Supervisor of Elections website in 2015 — was running unopposed for District 2.

But that changed earlier this month, when Levin dropped his bid for school board and shifted his attention to run for the Bradenton City Council’s Ward 2 seat. The decision, Levin said, was largely out of his hands.

On Dec. 14, the school board approved new district lines to balance population data from the 2020 U.S. Census, drawing Levin out of District 2 in the process.

“The obstacle is the way,” Levin said, quoting a stoic mantra in his letter to the supervisor of elections on Jan. 12, when he resigned from the school board race and announced his intention to run for city council.

Levin, who referred to himself as a “Former Cybersleuth and White Hat Hacker” in a recent news release, told the Bradenton Herald he hoped to bring efficiency back to the basic functions of government.

“You know, balancing the budget and getting rid of garbage,” he said, referring to driver shortages in the waste department and the alternate schedule for recycling and yard waste.

A new candidate

Byrd is now the only candidate in the District 2 School Board race, and Kennedy, who currently holds the seat, said he had no plans to file for re-election after his term ends in November.

The open seat offers Byrd a chance to honor his passion for education, he told the Bradenton Herald.

Before he earned a bachelor’s degree in business management and served for about two decades on the city council, Byrd lived through segregation and integration as a K-12 student in Manatee County.

He attended Bradenton Elementary School and then voluntarily transferred to Manatee Elementary, an integrated campus, before he moved on to Memorial Elementary, Bradenton Middle and Southeast High.

His father, Rev. Harold E. Byrd Sr., worked at Lincoln Memorial High and Southeast High as an agriculture teacher.

And Byrd said his mother, Ruby, was the first Black person to be elected to the Manatee County School Board, serving for more than five years in the late 80s and early 90s, while Louise R. Johnson was the first Black person to serve on the board after an appointment by the governor in 1977, before she was re-elected several times.

Byrd began his own career in public service as a city councilman between 1990 to 1996, before losing a bid for re-election and deciding to attend Florida A&M’s College of Law.

During that time, he earned a law degree and worked in the public sector at both the federal and state level. Then, in 2007, he rejoined the city council after unseating Rev. James Golden, who now serves as chairman of the Manatee County School Board.

Byrd later gave up his council seat to run an unsuccessful campaign for mayor in 2020. And though he considered transitioning to private life, Byrd said he was motivated to run for school board after watching Florida politicians ramp up their control over local policies.

Local control, he said, would be a top priority if he were elected to the District 2 seat.

“We cannot have anything dictated at the state level that will hamper the public safety side of educating kids,” Byrd said. “There has to be a balance between the rights of all, whether it be parental rights, teachers rights or the rights of students.”

Byrd said he also valued more financial oversight, along with a solution to the ongoing controversy at Lincoln Memorial Middle School.

The campus, formerly known as Lincoln Memorial Academy, operated for one year as a charter before the School Board terminated its contract and reclaimed its property.

The hope, Byrd said, was to gather community input and to let families drive the school’s future, whether that meant more character development, career exploration or other programming.

“We need to get with the families and parents and residents to make sure the direction we go from here is something they can embrace,” he said. “Anything else is just not going to work.”

This year marks the first time that School Board members will be elected only by the residents in their district. If no candidate earns a majority of the vote in August, there will be a runoff election in November.