Culture & Society · The Record
Escambia school board candidate says five of seven high schools got a C; the state list is not in hand
Isaac L. Williams made a claim that can be counted. Daily Pol could not retrieve the state file that would settle the count, and would rather say so than imply otherwise.
A candidate for the Escambia County School Board has said something unusually easy to check. In a candidate questionnaire published by the Florida Tribune on Aug. 4, 2026, Isaac L. Williams, a candidate for Escambia County School Board District 3, said of the district's 2026 school grades: "From a distance, there's something to celebrate...But a deeper dive into those ratings, you will discover that five out of the seven high schools received a C." Williams also stated that "I believe that decisions from a board member should be based on local, data-driven information" - a standard that invites the exercise this article attempts.
The office is nonpartisan, which is why no party label appears next to his name here. The Escambia County Supervisor of Elections announced on March 19, 2026 that Williams had pre-filed for the District 3 seat, and stated that "This is a nonpartisan office for the 2026 election." The sources in hand do not name the other candidates in this race, and this piece makes no claim about them.
What the record in hand carries
The document that would test the count is the Florida Department of Education's school-by-school grade release for 2025-26. Daily Pol was unable to retrieve that state file for this piece. What follows is what the reporting in hand does carry.
NorthEscambia.com reported in July 2026 that "For the first time in recent memory, the Escambia County Public Schools system has earned an 'A'". WEAR-TV, in a report covering the Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa districts together, reported that "83 percent of schools upheld or exceeded past performances. No schools earned less than a 'C'." That second sentence is worth reading with its scope attached: it comes from a report about three districts, not from a school-level Escambia table.
The year before, NorthEscambia.com reported that "Escambia County Public Schools maintained a grade of 'B'." and that 86% of schools upheld or exceeded their prior performance. Further back, the Pensacola News Journal reported an earlier state release in which 52 Escambia schools were graded: 11 earned an A, 11 a B, 21 a C, five a D and four an F. Those five figures sum to 52. The same report describes a July release month and one delay, attributing that delay to a change in state standards and state assessments named as FAST.
The gap: why the argument turns on a document that is not beside the claim
None of the four grade reports in hand lists Escambia's seven high schools with a letter beside each name, in the excerpts available to Daily Pol. Two of these reports are headlined as school-by-school listings; the excerpts Daily Pol holds do not include those tables. So the claim and the record that would test it are, at the moment of publication, in separate rooms. Williams's count may well be right. This desk cannot say from the record it holds that it is, and will not round that gap off.
Analysis: two things can hold at once
What follows is analysis, grounded in the figures cited above rather than asserted by any source. A district letter grade aggregates every graded school. If a district grades dozens of schools - the Pensacola News Journal counted 52 in an earlier release - then seven high schools are a small share of that pool, and the district letter can move without those seven moving. A districtwide A and a set of C-rated high schools are therefore not in contradiction; they are two different arithmetic questions. Nothing in the record in hand rules out either.
The record that is in hand: the money
The county's own campaign finance portal lists Williams under "Office Sought: School Board, District 3" with four reporting periods visible in the record Daily Pol holds: Q1 at $190.00 raised against $37.49 spent; Q2 at $16,521.08 against $5,048.29; P3 at $8,075.00 against $8,976.97; and P6 at $0.00 against $1,449.12. Those four periods total $24,786.08 raised and $15,511.87 spent. They also leave two windows uncovered: June 1 through June 26, and July 11 through July 24. No source in this record reports those totals; the arithmetic is Daily Pol's, from the county's published lines.
A checkable prediction, so this piece can be marked right or wrong: by Sept. 8, 2026, three weeks after the Aug. 18 primary, the county's campaign finance portal for this candidate will list at least one reporting period beginning on or after Aug. 1, 2026.
Daily Pol did not put questions to Williams before publication; his words here are quoted from the Florida Tribune questionnaire. Any response will be published. Readers with access to the state's 2025-26 school-by-school file can do the thing this article could not, which is set the seven names beside the seven letters and count.