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Widow of teacher killed in Parkland shooting elected to school board

Debra Hixon appeared recently in a campaign commercial supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Image: Debra Hixon, Ron DeSantis
In this Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2019 photo, Debra Hixon, wife of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School athletic director Chris Hixon, who was killed during a school shooting, speaks during a news conference, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.Wilfredo Lee / AP
/ Source: AP (Associated Press)

The widow of a teacher killed in the 2018 Florida high school massacre has won election Tuesday to that county’s school board, joining the mother of a slain student.

Debra Hixon, the widow of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School athletic director Chris Hixon, easily won election to the nine-member Broward County school board. She joins Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter Alyssa also died in the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting. Fourteen students and three staff members were killed.

Debra Hixon is a longtime educator. She currently runs a maritime technology and marine science program at a suburban Fort Lauderdale high school. Her husband died trying to confront the shooter, a former Stoneman Douglas student.

She and her son Corey appeared in a campaign commercial supporting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The commercial used video from Biden comforting Stoneman Douglas survivors in 2018. Corey, who has a developmental disability, runs after Biden as he is leaving and they embrace. Biden kisses Corey on the forehead and comforts him.