Tallahassee City Commission candidate PJ Perez has moved quickly to make his opponent Tom Derzypolski’s Republican past an issue in the Seat 3 runoff. But Perez’s own professional connection to a charter school created as part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education agenda complicates a campaign strategy centered on Republican policies and affiliations.
Following the Aug. 18 primary, Perez sent voters a text describing Derzypolski as a “longtime right-wing Republican” who is “out of step with Tallahassee’s values,” according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
Derzypolski was registered as a Republican for most of his adult life before changing his registration to no-party affiliation in August 2025. Perez also changed his registration shortly before entering the race. After spending much of his adult life registered NPA, Perez registered as a Democrat on Aug. 11, 2025, one day before filing to run.
Perez told the Democrat the change was intended to send voters a political “signal.”
“It’s just a reflection of my values,” Perez said. “You’re just signaling to voters this is what you’re getting when you pull the lever.”
The partisan attack, however, raises an interesting policy question because Perez is a social studies teacher at Tallahassee Collegiate Academy (TCA), a public charter high school whose creation resulted directly from a DeSantis administration initiative.
DeSantis Initiative Created TCA
In 2022, DeSantis announced an initiative encouraging state colleges to establish charter high schools emphasizing workforce education and STEM programs.
Tallahassee Community College, now Tallahassee State College, was selected as one of five colleges participating in the initiative and received $2 million to establish a charter school. TSC President Jim Murdaugh later said the college was grateful that DeSantis selected it for the program.
The Florida Department of Education subsequently approved TCC as Florida’s first college charter-school authorizer. Tallahassee Collegiate Academy opened in August 2023 as a tuition-free STEM charter high school.
TSC records also show substantial state investment continued after TCA’s creation. In 2023, Murdaugh identified a $1.6 million state appropriation for the charter-school program.
Perez previously spent 12 years teaching at SAIL High School, part of Leon County Schools, before moving to TCA.
That employment does not mean Perez endorses DeSantis, Republican education policies or even Florida’s broader charter-school movement. Teachers routinely work within institutions without endorsing the political decisions that created or fund them.
But Perez’s Republican-focused campaign strategy makes the distinction relevant.
Leon Democrats Have Warned About Funding Leaving Traditional Public Schools
The partisan debate over the City Commission Seat 3 race also intersects with positions previously taken by Ryan Ray and the Leon County Democratic Party on public education.
Ray, who serves as chairman of the Leon County Democratic Party and as an aide to City Commissioner Jeremy Matlow, has been a vocal critic of Republican education policies that expand alternatives to traditional public schools.
In September 2023, Ray wrote on the Leon Democrats’ official website about a debate with the chairman of the Leon County Republican Party. In describing the Democratic position on education, Ray said Tallahassee should “fight back against extreme experiments in privatizing our public schools” and said Democrats needed to “protect public education” from what he described as far-right influence.
Ray has also identified Florida’s expansion of school vouchers as an important partisan issue. During the 2024 campaign against Republican state Sen. Corey Simon, Ray said he expected Simon’s sponsorship of the state’s universal school-voucher legislation to be a major issue for Democrats. Democrats argued that the expansion of vouchers diverted billions of dollars toward alternatives to traditional public schools.
Charter Schools Have Been a Local Political Issue
Leon County public-school advocates have long criticized charter-school expansion precisely because students—and funding—leave traditional public schools.
During a 2024 superintendent forum, Superintendent Rocky Hanna described himself as “very outspoken” against what he called “reckless charter school expansion.”
Hanna’s explanation was financial.
“There’s only so much money we have in Leon County,” Hanna said, arguing that opening additional charter schools “watered-down resources.”
Leon School Board member Alva Smith has similarly connected declining enrollment with the district’s financial problems. Tallahassee Reports previously reported that approximately $7,775 in funding was associated with each student leaving LCS for a charter or private school at the time.
TCA therefore presents an unusual test of that argument.
It is a charter school, created through a Republican governor’s initiative, operating outside the Leon County School Board and competing in the same market for high-school students.
Yet TCA is also different from many charter schools criticized by public-school advocates. It is affiliated with a public state college, emphasizes STEM and workforce education and gives students an opportunity to earn college credentials while completing high school.
Those distinctions could provide Perez with a reasonable argument for supporting TCA while opposing other elements of Republican education policy.
But his campaign’s focus on Derzypolski’s Republican history makes the question worth asking.
Party Label or Policy?
The issue is not whether working at TCA makes Perez a Republican. It plainly does not.
The more substantive question is whether Republican affiliation itself should be a major consideration in a nonpartisan City Commission election—or whether candidates should instead be judged on the particular policies they support.
Derzypolski has argued for the latter, saying the campaign should focus on local issues rather than partisan labels.
Perez’s employment at TCA provides a useful example of why that distinction matters.
A Republican administration created a charter-school program. TCA emerged from it. Perez left an LCS school to teach there. And by all indications, TCA is providing an educational option that hundreds of area families have chosen.
None of that invalidates Perez’s criticism of Republican policies he opposes.
But if Republican politics are going to be central to his case against Derzypolski, voters could reasonably ask Perez to move beyond the party label and identify which Republican policies he believes are objectionable—and which ones, like the policy that helped create the school where he teaches, may have produced worthwhile results.
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