For one St. Johns County parent in Florida, the question had apparently been sitting in her inbox — and in the back of her mind — for nearly two years. During the 2024 campaign over a school tax referendum, Ami Demii received an email containing voter registration information and the language voters would see on the ballot. The message did not explicitly tell her how to vote.
But Demii still wondered about something more basic: How did whoever sent it get her email address?
That question resurfaced at a recent school board candidate forum, and the answer from longtime board member Beverly Slough has now created a much bigger headache.
Slough, the District 1 incumbent and current board chair, suggested during the exchange that a political action committee involved in the referendum campaign was responsible for sending the emails, according to News4JAX’s I-Team report.
After the comment began circulating on social media and raised questions among parents about whether their contact information had been provided to an outside political group, Slough walked it back.
“I misspoke,” she told News4JAX in an emailed response.
Slough said the district does not sell parents’ contact information and apologized for what she called a misstatement.
The St. Johns County School District was even more emphatic.
“We emphatically deny parents’ information was provided to a Political Action Committee,” the district said in a statement reported by News4JAX.
A district spokesperson told the station that searches of public records confirmed parental information was never shared with a PAC.
And that distinction matters.
There is currently no verified evidence in the reporting that the school district sold or supplied parents’ email addresses to a political action committee. News4JAX also reported that it remains unclear who actually sent the email Demii received in 2024.
What is clear is that one parent asked a question, a veteran board member gave an answer that immediately raised eyebrows, and that board member later said the answer was wrong.
For parents protective of where their personal information ends up, that was enough to keep the conversation going.
A Two-Year-Old Email Becomes a Fresh Political Problem
The original controversy reaches back to the November 2024 election, when St. Johns County voters were considering two school funding measures.
One renewed a half-cent sales tax for school construction and other capital expenses. Another added a one-mill property tax aimed largely at school staffing and programs. Both ultimately passed, according to the St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections.
The district’s own referendum material said the additional millage would help recruit and retain employees, support school safety and student welfare, and preserve educational programs. District bargaining records later estimated one mill at more than $58 million before various allocations. Those records can be viewed through the St. Johns County School District’s bargaining archive.
To families at the time, though, an unexpected email about the referendum could feel less like a budget spreadsheet and more like a personal question: Why is this showing up in my inbox?
Demii told News4JAX she viewed the message as one-sided and wanted to know how her address had been obtained.
At the candidate forum, Slough linked the emails to a PAC that had run the campaign.
Then came the reversal.
That was particularly striking because Slough is hardly new to the school system. The district’s official biography says she was first elected to the board in 2002 and currently serves as its chair.
Another parent cited by News4JAX, Rachel Hand, questioned how someone with that much experience could mistakenly answer a question involving parent privacy.
The timing makes the issue even harder to separate from local politics.
Slough is running for another term in District 1 against Kevin Allen in the Aug. 18 primary, according to Ballotpedia’s St. Johns County school board election page.
Allen has seized on the controversy, criticizing the possibility that a PAC could have been involved with school communications and saying he would protect parents’ privacy.
Slough’s own campaign, meanwhile, has made her relationship with families a central part of its message. Her campaign website describes her record as one of “Partnering with Parents” and emphasizes her more than two decades on the board.
That makes the current dispute particularly personal politically: It touches the exact issue — trust between school leaders and families — that candidates regularly ask voters to judge them on.
Parents Online Want Answers — But Some Claims Go Too Far
The controversy has also moved beyond the candidate forum.
Public posts circulating in St. Johns County Facebook groups have repeated the parent-data concern, with one opening with a simple demand:
“Parents and taxpayers: We deserve answers.”
That sentiment is understandable. What followed in some of those posts, however, went further than the facts currently support.
Some social posts asserted that Slough had confirmed the district sold parent and community email addresses to a PAC. That has not been established by News4JAX’s reporting, and the district specifically denies providing parents’ information to a political action committee.
The public Facebook discussion can be seen here, but the distinction is important: social-media accusations are not evidence that a sale or transfer actually occurred.
For now, there are really two stories happening at once.
One is the internet version, where a few seconds of video and a provocative claim can quickly become a definitive accusation.
The other is messier.
A parent says she received a message in 2024 and still wants to know exactly how the sender reached her. A longtime board member gave an explanation at a public forum and later said she had misspoken. The school district says it did not provide parents’ information to a PAC. And the identity of whoever sent the original email remains unclear.
That unresolved piece may be the most important one.
Because underneath the election-year politics and social-media arguments is a question many parents can relate to immediately: Who has my information, and how did they get it?
Slough has apologized for her statement. The district has issued a firm denial.
But with St. Johns County voters heading to the polls on Aug. 18, the controversy has landed at a particularly uncomfortable moment for a board member whose campaign is asking families to trust her experience.
And for parents who still want to know exactly how that 2024 email arrived, “I misspoke” may answer one question while leaving another one very much alive.
