Widow of teacher killed in Florida high school shooting wins election to school board

The widow of a teacher killed in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting was elected Tuesday to serve on a Florida county’s school board. 

The Associated Press reported that Debra Hixon, widow of the high school’s athletic director Chris Hixon, easily won election to the nine-member Broward County school board.

Hixon joins Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa also died in the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting. Alhadeff was elected to the school board in November 2018. 

According to the AP, Hixon runs a maritime technology and marine science program at a suburban Fort Lauderdale high school. 

Hixon’s husband was one of three staff members killed in the massacre that also left fourteen students dead. Chris Hixon died attempting to confront the shooter, a former Stoneman Douglas student. 

Hixon’s victory Tuesday comes after she and her son, Corey, appeared in a campaign ad supporting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in September. 

The video includes 2018 footage of Biden comforting Corey, who has a developmental disability. Biden tells Corey, “you’ll be OK,” before he kisses Corey on his forehead and continues to hug him. 

“I don’t have it in me a lot of times to give him that comfort, so it meant a lot for somebody else to give him, to take that time and to care enough about him,” Hixon says in the ad. “My older son calls him Uncle Joe. He can be that person that can comfort our nation and bring us together.”  

The AP called the presidential race in Florida for President Trump at 12:35 a.m. EST Wednesday. With 96 percent of estimated votes reported, Trump led the Sunshine State with roughly 51 percent of the vote to Biden’s 48 percent. 

The president’s 3-point lead in the state is a marked improvement from four years ago, when he beat then-Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton in Florida by 1 point, or just 113,000 votes. 

In the lead-up to Election Day, public polling predicted a tight race in Florida, the third largest state in the country and home to some 14 million registered voters. 

The state’s 29 electoral votes helped Trump secure a significant boost in his path to reelection. As of Wednesday early afternoon, the AP had projected that Trump holds 213 electoral votes, with Biden at 238 out of 270 needed to win.