Teacher tired of walking ‘on eggshells’ exits profession, runs for governor

When Dayna Marie Foster thinks of why she decided to run for governor, she remembers the students she had as a math teacher at Fort Lauderdale High School.

There was the girl who didn’t do her homework because she was too busy taking care of her younger siblings while her mom picked up extra shifts at work to make ends meet. The boy who asked her if she lost access to food stamps like his family did when the federal government was shut down around Thanksgiving. And their classmates who didn’t show up to school because their parents were afraid of being stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“When you have these windows through the students to the families and what they’re going through, there’s no way that I personally could just turn a blind eye to what was happening and not do anything about it,” said Foster, herself a Fort Lauderdale High alum. “We can talk all day long, but talk is cheap. Where is the actual action?”

Foster, 32, is among the half-dozen names Democrats will see on the ballot when they go to vote in Florida’s Aug. 18 primary election. Like most of them, she lacks significant money and a sizable campaign machine. Pollsters are already looking ahead to November, expecting David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who changed his party affiliation to Democrat last spring, to face off with GOP frontrunner Byron Donalds.

But Foster, who decided to leave the profession when last school year ended, is carrying a torch for the tens of thousands of Florida teachers who remain in an industry that, in this state, is increasingly constrained by regulations about what they can and can’t say, both inside the classroom and out.

Her decidedly progressive campaign platform — she was endorsed Thursday by Florida’s Democratic Progressive Caucus — includes hiking pay for Florida’s teachers, boosting funding for public education and, as she says it, getting censorship out of schools.

“Public servants know what’s at stake, and we’re fighting for our democracy,” she said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “anti-woke” agenda has taken a toll on teachers and students, Foster said. She’s seen students disappointed by the state’s rejection of an AP African American history course and English teachers strategically pick books that wouldn’t offend the governor’s sensibilities. Even as a math teacher, Foster said she has been impacted by the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” policies because she cannot refer to transgender students by their preferred pronouns. The pressure on teachers “to walk on eggshells” in the classroom has gone too far, she said.

“What we are seeing is that this is the active implementation of a plan to dismantle the pillars that preserve and facilitate the information that a population needs in order to retain its power and make sure that democracy always lies within the hands of the people,” she said.

Restrictions have extended outside the classroom, with some teachers being fired or punished for criticizing conservative activist Charlie Kirk after his assassination. They have also reached into the state’s universities, with one state college English professor suing over her termination for a short story that dealt with sex, which apparently made one pupil uncomfortable enough to lodge a complaint.

“If a teacher wanted to cover ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ as opposed to ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ they had that autonomy to choose between those two books,” Foster said. “But now we’re in the space where the DOE here in Florida says, ‘No, you don’t get the choice at all.’”

The Florida Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.

Teachers running for office

State Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Democrat running for Florida’s 24th Congressional district and a former chemistry teacher, said the political climate surrounding teachers and public schools has changed drastically since he first entered office in 2012. Similarly to Foster, Jones’ experience in the classroom pushed him to run for office.

“Teachers had educational freedom. We weren’t dealing with the Stop Woke Act and all this other stuff,” he said. “Now you have teachers looking over their shoulders, to the point where teachers don’t even want to be in the classroom.”

Foster says she left her teaching job June 30 “because I firmly believe that more professionals like myself need to step into public office.”

Foster was not happy with her options, and even unhappier with the Florida Democratic Party’s strategy, comparing Jolly to Charlie Crist, another Republican-turned-Democrat who badly lost to DeSantis in 2022. “I didn’t see a leader that I could stand behind,” Foster said.

“Democracy is a representative process. We should see more leaders that look like ourselves in these positions of public office, and it doesn’t matter if it’s at the most local level or if it’s at the state level,” she said.

Jones said he wasn’t familiar with Foster’s policies and ideas, but he has seen her videos on social media, where she’s recently gained some traction, with 64,000 followers on TikTok. “She’s very personable, and people have been vibing with her from her videos,” he said.

While Jones believes Jolly is Democrats’ best chance at winning the governorship, he said “there’s not enough teachers running for office.” Teachers’ patience and compassion make them great candidates, he said.

“No one should sit out because someone tells them to sit out,” Jones said. “Her running is noble. Her running is very democratic. And listen, at the end of the day, the people will have to decide.”

‘Students’ best interests at heart’

Samantha Allie, an 18-year-old Fort Lauderdale High graduate, said Foster, her junior-year math teacher, has qualities she looks for in a candidate: kindness, compassion and intelligence. Foster’s patience helped Allie succeed in math class despite her dyscalculia, a disorder that affects the brain’s ability to do math.

“Ms. Foster was a teacher that you could go back and visit,” Allie said. “She was very special.”

During her senior year, Allie was catching up with Foster when she told her she had big news, but she couldn’t talk about it in school. Allie googled her former teacher at home and was thrilled to see her campaign website. As a future education student at Florida Atlantic University, Allie said Foster’s education policies resonate with her.

“She has students’ best interests at heart. She has teachers’ best interests at heart,” Allie said.

Born in New York, Foster moved to South Florida when she was in the second grade. She spent her formative years in Broward moving around to different cities as her mother, a single parent, looked for more affordable options. At 19, she began working at the Broward County Library at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from Florida Atlantic University, a master’s degree in finance from Florida International University and a master’s degree in information from Florida State University, according to her campaign website. Frustrated after the 2024 elections, Foster earned another bachelor’s degree in political science from Florida State University.

Progressives, particularly democratic socialists in New York and Colorado, have made a splash in recent elections, much to the chagrin of establishment Democrats who do not want to be associated with far-left ideology. Though Republicans have won major elections in Florida in recent years, Foster insists that Florida is still a swing state and it’s possible for progressives to win big.

Foster is running on terminating all 287(g) agreements between state agencies and ICE and removing state Board of Education members who voted to adopt The Phoenix Declaration, a set of guiding principles for education created by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative organization behind Project 2025.

She also plans to tax the “ultra wealthy” to expand Florida Medicaid, fully fund public education, subsidize construction of affordable housing and build houses on public land to help Floridians afford to own homes.

Regardless of the outcome later this month, Foster plans to stay in politics.

“A lot of times people try to downplay what we are doing here at Foster for Florida, but we’re the people’s campaign,” she said. “What you hear from us is the people’s voice.”