Rob Wood won election to the Flagler School Board on Tuesday, unseating one-term incumbent Will Furry. Wood will serve as the District 2 School Board member for a four-year term in office spanning from 2026 to 2030.
“I’m just incredibly humbled that our residents and electorate would entrust our kids and faculty and staff and administrators in my care,” Wood said after the results came in. “I’ve experienced this new community with a bunch of people who’ve supported me and pushed and helped and just surrounded me in ways I couldn’t have even imagined.”
Wood, a local small business owner, was the only candidate who filed to challenge Furry, who works as a realtor by day. Though School Board races are nonpartisan, both candidates are registered Republicans.
Though he eventually set off on an ultimately unsuccessful re-election campaign, Furry first planned on seeking a higher office. Last year the 51-year-old announced his intention to run for U.S. Congress, mounting a primary challenge against Republican incumbent Randy Fine. Furry dropped his congressional bid in January.
In 2022 Furry won the general election with a 58.38% majority. His drop in performance from one election to the next may be partly due to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s decision not to endorse School Board candidates this time around. Furry was DeSantis’s pick four years ago at the height of state involvement in local education.
Furry spent two years as Flagler School Board Chair, totaling half of his single term in office. He now serves as Vice Chair, a position he was given after a nine-hour meeting with a 103 votes in which he and colleague Lauren Ramirez were both vying for the position.
There were three Flagler School Board seats on Tuesday’s primary election ballot. Two of those were guaranteed a final outcome on Tuesday; Furry and Wood’s District 2 race as well as Cathy Moon and Jill Woolbright’s District 1 contest. The three-way District 4 election was virtually guaranteed to head to a runoff in November given the unlikelihood of any one candidate eclipsing 50% of the vote.
