Lee County Schools Informed Parents Stronger Schools Brighter Futures

Lee County schools, in the open.

A community improvement initiative run by parents in Lee County, Florida. We collect what families, teachers and students are actually seeing inside the district, check it against the public record, and publish both.

Why Should You Care?

Three out of four registered voters skipped the last Lee County primary. Here is who decided everything in their absence, and what is on your 2026 ballot to change it.

August 18, 2026

141,250 people decided it for 475,217.

That is who turned out for the Lee County primary. Every seat settled that night was settled by fewer than three in ten registered voters, with all 99 precincts counted.

Two of those seats are now filled. They will not appear on your November ballot at all.

What a primary can do

A school board seat can be won before November.

Florida law settles a nonpartisan race at the primary when only two people run, or when someone clears 50%. That is how District 1 and the District 6 at-large seat were decided in August by a 29.72% electorate, while most of the county was not paying attention.

Districts 4 and 5 drew more candidates and nobody cleared 50%, so those two go to November.

So here is what is still yours
The August turnout, drawn out
29.72%

of registered Lee County voters cast a primary ballot.

7 in 10 did not vote at all.

141,250 ballots out of 475,217 registered voters. The seats decided that night were decided by the gold squares below.

Voted in the August primary Did not vote
The turnout gap is the whole game. A November general usually draws more people than an August primary.
The seats still open are the ones a bigger electorate gets to decide.
Your November 3, 2026 ballot

39 races in Lee County are still undecided.

Twenty-nine of them are special districts, the offices almost nobody can name. They still tax your property.

School Board
2 seats left
of the 4 that were up
They control: the grading policy, the calendar, the budget for a district of more than 100,000 students, and the hiring and firing of the superintendent. District 1 and the District 6 at-large seat were already filled in August. Districts 4 and 5 are single-member seats, so only voters who live in those two districts vote in them. Check which one you are in before you assume.
County Commission
Districts 2 and 4
plus Supervisor of Elections
They control: the impact fee developers actually pay, land use, and the approvals that decide what gets built where. District 5 was settled in August. Commissioners are elected at large, so every Lee County voter votes in both of these and in the Supervisor of Elections race. Each one lives in the district they represent, but the whole county elects them.
Cities and towns
5 races
Cape Coral Mayor and Council Districts 1, 4 and 6, plus the Fort Myers Beach Town Council. The sitting Cape Coral mayor was defeated in August, so that seat is between two new candidates. Council candidates qualify by district but are elected at large by the whole city, so a Cape Coral voter votes in all four. These are the governments that set your local police and fire budgets, your water and sewer rates, and your permits.
The 29 nobody watches
Fire, water,
erosion, CDDs
Alva, Bonita Springs, Fort Myers Beach, Fort Myers Shores, Iona-McGregor, North Fort Myers and South Trail fire districts. Captiva Erosion. Fourteen Community Development Districts. They levy taxes and assessments on your property, and they are decided by a few hundred votes. Most people leave these blank.

Not all of these are on your personal ballot. Which district seats you vote in depends on your address, and your Supervisor of Elections is the only one who can tell you for certain.

The dates that decide whether your vote counts

Four deadlines, and one that catches almost everybody.

  • Monday, October 5Last day to register, or to change your party, for the general election.
  • Thursday, October 22, 5 p.m.Last day to request a mail ballot.
  • Saturday, October 24 to Saturday, October 31Early voting, required statewide. Your county may add days on either side.
  • Tuesday, November 3Election day, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Anyone in line at 7 p.m. votes. A mail ballot has to be received by 7 p.m., and a postmark does not count.
  • Thursday, November 5, 5 p.m.Last chance to fix a mail-ballot signature problem.
The one that catches almost everybody: a Florida vote-by-mail request no longer lasts forever. One request covers elections only through the end of the calendar year of the next general election. If you have not asked since the last general election year, no ballot is coming to you, however many years you have voted by mail.
And then 2028

The seats not on this ballot come up next, and so does the tax.

School board Districts 2, 3 and 7 are not on your 2026 ballot. Neither are the county commission seats that were decided in earlier cycles. They come around in 2028, along with the presidential race that brings the biggest electorate of the four-year cycle.

One question on this ballot decides how 2028 works. Lee County voters are being asked whether to elect county commissioners by single-member district starting in 2028, instead of the countywide at-large system used now. Under the system we have, every voter votes in every commission race. Under the other one, you would vote in a single district and your commissioner would answer to a fifth of the county rather than all of it. Reasonable people argue it both ways, and it is on your ballot either way.

The half-cent school sales tax expires in December 2028. Renewing it requires a referendum, and no renewal question has been put to voters yet. If you want a say in that one, the time to start paying attention is before it arrives as a line on a ballot you have not read.

What the half-cent tax pays for
Take it back

Three things, and the first takes two minutes.

  1. Check that you are registered, and check your districts. The state runs one lookup for every county. It tells you your precinct, which districts you live in, and links to your county's official sample ballot.
  2. Build your ballot before you go. Every race in your county, with what each candidate raised and who from, marked your way and printable. Nothing you mark leaves your browser.
  3. Vote the whole ballot. The bottom of it is the government closest to your street, and it is where a single vote is worth the most.
Check your registration and districts Build your sample ballot See who funds the candidates

Parents for Transparency is nonpartisan. We do not tell you who to vote for and we do not rank anyone. We show you where the money goes and which seats are yours to decide. Every figure here traces to public records.

Sources: turnout, registration and precincts, Lee County Supervisor of Elections election-night reporting for August 18, 2026 (475,217 registered, 141,250 ballots, 29.72%, 99 of 99 precincts). The single-member district question was placed on the November 3 ballot by the Governor and is covered by Florida Politics, WGCU, Florida Weekly and the News-Press; county commissioners separately added a term-limits question in May 2026 whose final ballot language we have not confirmed, so it is not described here. Which seats were settled in August and which remain, Fla. Stat. 105.051 applied to the certified candidate lists. Race counts, Lee County Supervisor of Elections candidate filings retrieved 2026-08-27. Who votes in which race: school board scopes from the Supervisor of Elections' election-night reporting; county commissioners are elected at large per Lee County's own Board of County Commissioners page; Cape Coral council seats qualify by district and are elected citywide. Deadlines, Fla. Stat. 97.055, 101.62, 101.657, 101.67 and 101.68, cited in full on our voter guide.