Election 2024: Who is Lee County's new superintendent of schools?

Longtime Lee County school district teacher and administrator Denise Carlin won the county's first election for superintendent since 1974 on Tuesday night.

With 99 of 99 precincts reporting across Lee County, Republican Carlin, a 55-year resident of Lee County and a 32-year educator in the county's public schools, has taken home 68% of the vote, or more than 247,000 votes.

Local lawyer and Democrat Victor Arias has earned 31% of the vote, or more than 116,000 votes total.

Carlin ran her campaign on prioritizing safe schools, increased student achievement, and fiscal responsibility. "Parents deserve to have the peace of mind that their children are safe at school," she told The News-Press / Naples Daily News.

"The first issue that I will tackle is filling the 180 teacher vacancies that currently exist in the district," she said. "If we want to improve student achievement, we must have a high-quality teacher in every classroom with teachers receiving pay that is competitive with neighboring districts. Right now, that is not the case.

"I will also ... reallocate dollars to support students in classrooms and teachers' compensation."

Carlin is walking into a position with existing challenges, including the aforementioned teacher shortage, as well as a dissatisfied local NAACP chapter. Lee NAACP President James Muwakkil. told The News-Press / Naples Daily News he has real concerns about the number of Black students being suspended and/or arrested, saying the number is much too high. And, he said, the number of Black students who graduate with their high school degree from the Lee County school district is too low.

"Addressing achievement and discipline gaps requires having high expectations − that all students can and will learn," Carlin said. She highlighted teaching basic skills such as appropriate behavior to students, implementing consequences and improving the student code of conduct as initial steps she would take to improve Black graduation rates and decrease arrests and suspensions of the same demographic.

Top of mind for Lee County Schools, too, has to be the remediation and repairs to The Sanibel School and Fort Myers Beach Elementary, both of which suffered damage in Hurricane Milton's high winds and storm surge.

Students of both schools will relocate to existing Lee County area schools while repairs are conducted. This is a familiar situation for Beach Elementary families; the school was devastated by Hurricane Ian in 2022, and at one point, repairing and reopening it was up in the air.

Parents lobbied heavily for its return, and the school welcomed students back after more than a year of closure. According to Sanibel School Principal Jennifer Lusk, her students are adjusting well to the transition.

Carlin worked for the School District of Lee County from 1991 until her retirement in July 2023, according to her LinkedIn. She served as a teacher, assistant principal and principal until she moved into central office in 2012, when she became the executive director of human resources.

She moved on to several other positions within the district, including executive director of elementary schools, before becoming the chief of staff in 2021. She served in that position for one year, and then became the chief communications and government relations officer.

While serving as chief of staff, Carlin was responsible for a $2.7 billion budget and the daily operations of the school district, including 13,000 employees and 100,000 students, in partnership with the superintendent. She currently serves on the board of directors for New Horizons of Southwest Florida and the Pace Center for Girls.