But asked in a followup email about her reason for running, Farrant emailed back a cordial reply, saying that she was in the race “because Orange County needs courageous leadership and a return to common-sense education."

“After three years serving District 3,” she wrote, “I’ve seen the urgent need for accountability, transparency, and a chair who will put students and families first. I’m ready to restore trust and refocus our schools on academic excellence.”

Farrant has a background in nursing, becoming a registered nurse at 23 (her license expired in 2011). According to the Candidate Connection Survey questions she answered when she ran for school board in 2022, she worked in the cardiac care unit, postpartum and the emergency room, which she enjoyed for the “fast pace” and “helping people in a critical time in their lives.”

Farrant has done missionary work all of her life, beginning, according to her campaign website, when her family moved to Guatemala when she was 13 for “full time charity work.”

In 2014, Farrant started Wigs of Hope, a charity that provides wigs of human hair to children in El Salvador undergoing cancer treatment. She is also vice president of the Impact Nations ministry in Guatemala and El Salvador founded in 2012 by her husband Jonathan.

In the blog, Farrant Adventures, which documents their missionary work, Farrant wrote that she and her husband “met as kids on a mission trip in Guatemala.” They married in 2001 and returned in 2003 with the first of their five children (three boys, two girls) in tow. Two of Farrant’s children now work in their ministry’s missionary training program, School of Missions, where Farrant is also listed as Biblical Governance Director. Farrant’s bio on the School of Missions page states that as an Orange County school board member, “she has a passion to protect children and stands boldly for Truth [sic] in the face of evil.”  

Books and bathrooms

Farrant was elected in a runoff to the Orange County School Board with more than 52 percent of the vote in 2022. That was the year Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsed many school board candidates throughout Florida (although not in Orange County), and the conservative group Moms For Liberty — known for opposing mask mandates and inclusive education — was on the rise. The Southern Poverty Law Center has since labeled Moms for Liberty an extremist anti-government group.

Farrant, associated with the Orange County Moms for Liberty chapter, campaigned against mask mandates and for removing books she called "filth" from school libraries as well as Parental Rights in Education legislation, colloquially known as “Don’t Say Gay.” [Editor's Note: Much of that law was rolled back in 2024 as part of a settlement with LGBTQ groups.]

‍

In her time on the school board, Farrant has been involved with helping teachers get a 10 percent raise and advocated for more efficient strategies for negotiating teacher salaries. She also attempted to reverse OCPS's bathroom policy for accommodating trans students and helped shut down an after-school Drag & Donuts discussion that was to have been held with a performer at Boone High School. This attracted national news coverage when the state Department of Education threatened to investigate and potentially revoke the licenses of any school staff who attended the talk organized by the school's Queer and Ally Alliance.

This year, Farrant made her second attempt to quash OCPS’s October LGBTQ+ Awareness and History Month. She tried unsuccessfully in 2023, saying, according to the Orlando Sentinel, that it was a “push to normalize sexual promiscuity and sexual ideations at a young age.” Her school board colleagues responded that that was “hateful.” This time, Farrant argued that LGBTQ+ Awareness and History Month was “redundant” because Pride Month in June and June 12 as Pulse Remembrance Day are already recognized. [Editor’s note: On June 12, 2016, a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 58 more at the gay nightclub Pulse, one of the largest mass shootings in the U.S. and the deadliest attack against the LGBTQ community.]  

Farrant has made some callous comments about transgender students, describing one student as “a trans whatever” and telling a Boone High School parent her trans son was an “abomination to God” who should kill himself.

J.H., a Boone High School alumnus who asked that we just use her initials to protect her child, told VoxPopuli Farrant made those comments at a 2021 school board meeting before she was elected. J.H. had spoken out in support of re-affirming October as LGBTQ+ Awareness and History Month, noting that her child was LGBTQ. She was returning to her seat when Farrant, sitting in the audience, made the comments as she walked by.

“I recognized her voice from when she spoke at school board meetings,” J.H. told VoxPopuli in an Instagram message. “When I turned around … Alicia like smirked at me.” In an earlier message, J.H. said that she was “just floored that a woman, a mother no less, would say something like that about a child. It was before she ran [for office], but that should not matter.”

Since Farrant’s election to the school board, J.H. said she has reached out to her several times by email and at school board meetings, demanding an apology for her statements — particularly since LGBTQ+ young people have more than four times the risk of suicide as their peers. She said her child, now 23, ultimately left Boone without graduating because the environment was not supportive.

J.H. said she’s been ignored.

VoxPopuli has reached out to Farrant for comment.