Following his so-so results with school board endorsements during the primary election in August, Gov. Ron these campaigns hadn’t drawn as much of his attention because he had “so much other stuff going on.”

DeSantis endorsed 23 candidates and watched 11 lose, six win, and six have their fate on hold until this week. Tuesday, four runoffs went in favor of DeSantis endorsees, with wins in Brevard, Miami-Dade, Volusia, and Lee counties.

In all, DeSantis watched 13 of his 23 endorsements lose, while 10 won — eleven counting his less-formal endorsement of Laurie Cox in Leon County, who won in August against Democratic-endorsed candidate Jeremy Rogers.

Eight-year member Matt Susin won reelection to the Brevard County School Board, fending off Ava Taylor with a margin of nearly 20%. He previously served as chair of the board, which remains fully conservative, .

DeSantis-endorsed Donna Brosemer challenged incumbent Carl Persis to win a seat on the Volusia County School Board. Brosemer finished with 58% of the vote to Persis’ 41%.

Vanessa Chaviano, a DeSantis endorsee running for an open seat on the Lee County School Board, beat Sheridan Chester with 69% of the vote to Chester’s 30%, with nearly 300,000 votes cast.

DeSantis’ endorsement was not enough for Stacy Geier to claim an open seat on the Pinellas County School Board; she lost to Katie Blaxberg, a . Geier held a 2% edge on Blaxberg in the August primary, although the general favored Blaxberg by more than 4%.

DeSantis endorsee and Air Force veteran Mark Cioffi lost his bid for the Hernando County School Board. He lost to Michelle Bonczek by nearly 10% in the general, despite earning 44% of votes to Bonczek’s 28.8% in the primary, which prompted the runoff.

Democratic endorsements both lose

Two of the Democratic Party’s 11 school board endorsements faced runoffs Tuesday. Of the 11 the party backed, seven won in August. Facing runoffs were Max Tuchman in Miami-Dade and Stephanie Arguello in Seminole County.

Tuchman, a tech entrepreneur, lost in a big way to incumbent and DeSantis endorsee Mary Blanco, who earned 67.88% of votes — 86,151 to Tuchman’s 40,773. Blanco was appointed to the board a year ago by DeSantis.

Arguello, a public health PhD student, lost to incumbent and chair of the board Abby Sanchez by nearly 6%. Sanchez earned 52.95% of votes, or 114,630 votes to Arguello’s 101,842.

‘Other stuff’

The “other stuff” DeSantis alluded to included Amendment 3, which would have legalized recreational use of marijuana, and Amendment 4, which would have guaranteed a right to an abortion in the Florida Constitution. Both fell just short of the 60% voter approval threshold.

The governor, the First Lady, and other GOP officials paraded around the state campaigning against the two amendments in the weeks between two major hurricanes and Election Day. Some said the outcomes of the amendments could be a major mark on the governor’s record, for better or worse, if he chooses to pursue the White House again.

Nonpartisan school board elections will remain, as voters rejected Amendment 1 Tuesday, which would have printed candidates’ political party affiliations next to their names on the ballot. The races will remain nonpartisan on paper, although partisan endorsements likely will not stop any time soon.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

“Common Core has failed teachers, parents and students,” he declared. But the buck didn’t stop there. Yes, the demoralizing teaching-to-the-test regime was dead and buried thanks to Executive Order 19-32. But that was just the beginning. Because real accountability involves results. 

Fast-forward to today, and Florida is ranked the No. 1 state in education, according to U.S. News and World Report. Florida is also ranked tops in education freedom and parent empowerment, according to separate reports, and we have undertaken the largest expansion of school choice in the nation’s history while breaking our own teacher pay records year after year. Not even the COVID-19 pandemic could slow down student progress, as Florida logged the highest NAEP results in state history in 2022.

What happened? When DeSantis eradicated Common Core, he also implemented a vision for success, coupled with high expectations. He immediately directed Florida’s commissioner of education to conduct a comprehensive review of the state’s K-12 academic standards and recommend revisions that would pave the way for students to receive a world-class education and prepare them for jobs of the future. The directive involved a focused return to reading, writing and arithmetic; innovative ways to streamline testing; dramatic increases in the quality of instructional curriculum; high-quality civics education; and a pathway to making Florida the most literate state in the nation. Essentially, the task was to answer the call of parents, families and educators by creating premier state academic standards and including parent and teacher feedback in the process.

What followed was an unprecedented outreach and revision effort that resulted in Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking, or B.E.S.T., Standards. More than 100,000 reviews of current and draft standards were conducted; 1,510 combined years of experience from teacher experts were absorbed; 154 virtual and 11 in-person meetings with Florida educational groups were conducted; more than 80 Florida-based teacher and stakeholder groups participated; and 9 public listening meetings were held across the state to gather feedback directly from parents and residents. It was a massive undertaking that culminated in the Florida Board of Education’s adoption of the newly formed B.E.S.T. Standards, followed by generous budget funding and subsequent English Language Arts and mathematics curriculum updates.

“We’ve developed clear and concise expectations for students at every grade level and allow teachers the opportunity to do what they love most — inspire young Floridians to achieve their greatest potential,” said DeSantis, adding, “Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards were made by Florida teachers for Florida students, and I know they will be a model for the rest of the nation.”

With Florida’s new standards in place, the mission moved to assessing results — and to do so without creating a Common Core 2.0 scenario where teachers were once again doomed to teach to the test. We heard over and over again that onerous exam preparation had taken over classrooms, crowded out elective learning opportunities such as music and art, and reduced kids to test-takers rather than blossoming learners. Meanwhile, year-end test results were coming too late to do any good. Imagine discovering what your child needed to improve after — not during — the school year! It made no sense, and we were determined to do better for our 3 million public school students and nearly 200,000 teachers.

The solution was just as bold: the nation’s first full transition to a progress monitoring system known as the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST). It was an honor to sponsor this legislation in the Florida state Senate. Beginning in the 2022-23 school year, students had three short assessment check-ins at the beginning, middle and end of the year, in stark contrast to multi-day, end-of-year, high-stakes tests for English Language Arts and mathematics. Students, teachers and parents benefit from this design by gaining real-time, immediate and actionable data that allows teachers to monitor progress and tailor instruction to each student’s needs.

Year-one results showed substantial growth, including up to 42 percentage points in some subjects. They also demonstrated significant improvements throughout the year in student subgroups, with Hispanics, African Americans and those from economically disadvantaged families all showing double-digit increases in the percentage scoring at or above grade level. Progress monitoring proved a resounding success.

Florida’s improvement in student achievement is a testament to DeSantis’ leadership, and the Florida Department of Education remains committed to strengthening our state’s educational standards, assessing progress and always putting students first. It’s an accountability system that works.

The summit will be held at a downtown Marriott from June 29 through July 2, despite from LGBTQ rights advocates and others who object to the group’s stance on social and education issues. 

The American Historical Association sent to the Museum of the American Revolution on June 26, urging its president to reconsider the decision to let Moms for Liberty hold a portion of the summit there.

“Moms for Liberty is an organization that has vigorously advocated censorship and harassment of history teachers, banning history books from libraries and classrooms, and legislation that renders it impossible for historians to teach with professional integrity without risking job loss and other penalties,” the letter read.

Neither Moms for Liberty nor the Museum of the American Revolution responded to a request for comment about the letter. 

The summit is a must for Republican leaders, a reflection of the organization’s influence. Some high-profile speakers, including DeSantis, are returning for a second round: The governor spoke at last summer’s event alongside Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and former secretary of housing and urban development Ben Carson. 

This year’s event has proven an even bigger draw for conservative politicians and their followers. Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said the 650-ticket summit has already sold out. 

The vocal, right-wing parent organization was formed in Florida in 2021 by school board members Tina Descovich and Justice and by , who is married to the of the Florida Republican Party. 

Moms for Liberty members originally targeted COVID protocols but have since focused on critical race theory, diversity and inclusion, social-emotional learning and LGBTQ issues, among other topics. The group claims 285 chapters and 120,000 members across 44 states.

The organization gained national recognition after members disrupted school board meetings across the country, with of those who oppose their views. Local chapters have mounted highly successful efforts targeting materials related to racism, slavery and gender. 

Moms for Liberty was recently labeled an by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Justice called the characterization shocking and absurd. 

“I think they’ve really shot themselves in the foot,” she said. 

Her group’s mission is to empower parents and support their fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children, she said. 

“That includes their education, their medical care and their morality and their religion,” she told �鶹��Ʒ. “And it seems like we’re in a tug-of-war with the federal government in our nation’s schools.”

President Joe Biden also was invited to the summit, but his office did not respond, Justice said. The Biden campaign did not answer emails requesting comment.

Moms for Liberty has endorsed across the nation, many of whom have gone on to win. 

Despite its ability to attract high-profile politicians and zealous parent advocates, some experts question whether education will be a key issue in the 2024 presidential race.

Jeffrey Henig, professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said he thinks it will likely take a backseat. 

“Education is one of those issues that is tempting politically because it gets a fervent response for a subset of voters, particularly parents,” he said. “And that can be attractive because it lets you mobilize people who don’t always like to turn out — or are on the fence. But … it can backfire.”

School politics, he said, “can take sharp twists and turns” that leave politicians exposed.

“T�ǻ岹��’s cheers for a strong stand against so-called ‘smut’ in texts can morph into indignation at book banning and perceived attacks on treasured schools and teachers,” he said. 

Frederick M. Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said politicians once used education to appeal to voters in the middle. Now, he said, they use it to court their base. 

“If Trump is the nominee and you don’t like him, it’s not likely that his stance on Title IX or school choice will change that,” he said. “And if you’re concerned about Biden, wokeness or federal spending, it’s tough to imagine that a proposal for universal pre-K or student loan forgiveness is going to win you over.”

Michael J. Petrilli, president of the , a research fellow at Stanford University’s and executive editor of , said that if Trump gets the nomination, his views on education or other issues won’t really matter. Nothing will distract from the candidate himself, he said. 

The embattled former president, whose divisive rhetoric has continued well beyond his time in office, is facing a host of legal troubles, including a recent indictment over alleged . 

“If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, the election will be about Donald Trump,” Petrilli said. “End of sentence. Policy issues will play an exceedingly minor role.”

But if another candidate wins the party’s nomination, Petrilli said, he or she might use the issue of school choice to entice working-class Hispanic and Black voters.

“And it might work,” he said. 

DeSantis has banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity . His Parental Rights in Education Act — often called the Don’t Say Gay Bill — has been replicated .

Haley, a former , has referred to transgender girls participating in girls’ sports as “the women’s issue of our time” on the campaign trail. Placing herself to the right of DeSantis, she has said his legislation isn’t stringent enough. 

Henig said the Florida governor’s overall stance is too extreme to succeed with a national electorate.

“Americans still have a lot of trust and allegiance to their local school communities,” he said, adding that Democrats might frame DeSantis’s efforts as an attack on teachers.

But that wasn’t the case in Loudoun County where former schools chief Scott Ziegler was indicted last week in a high-profile case in which a teen boy assaulted two female classmates months apart — with no warning to the greater school community after the first attack.

This time, it was Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, elected last year on a pledge to empower parents, who spearheaded the investigation into the district’s handling of the case: Acting on his state Attorney General Jason Miyares impaneled a special grand jury to investigate the school system’s alleged coverup and mishandling of the assaults. Its findings were released earlier this month in a .

Ziegler was fired after the grand jury found he lied to the public about the first incident, which took place in a girl’s bathroom. 

The location sparked outrage among those who believed the assault was tied to the district’s decision to allow students to use the bathroom of their choosing rather than the one that corresponds with their sex assigned at birth. The attacker was wearing a kilt at the time. Despite early rumors, he is not transgender and the bathroom policyuntil long after the first assault.

Both Ziegler and the district spokesperson were with the former superintendent facing multiple misdemeanors, including false publication, and his colleague, Wayde Byard, accused of felony perjury. Ziegler was also charged in connection with a special education teacher who said the district failed to take action after she complained of being and then retaliated against her for speaking out.

Ziegler, in a statement to The Washington Post last week, spoke about the grand jury investigation and said, “I am disappointed that an Attorney General-controlled, secret, and one-sided process — which never once sought my testimony — has made such false and irresponsible accusations. I will vigorously defend myself. I look forward to a time when the truth becomes public.”

Youngkin’s intervention, while unusual, is no surprise. Conservative parents in Loudoun County, riled by the district’s COVID policies, teachings about systemic racism and alleged sexualization of children through LGBTQ literature, have been among the most vocal in the country since the pandemic began. Youngkin capitalized on that during his campaign and came through with his promise to give parents statewide a greater say in the goings-on at their children’s school — starting with Loudoun County.

After the grand jury report was released, Youngkin addressed the backlash to his direct role in setting the investigation into motion.

“I do believe that part of my job as governor is to make the decisions to shine light on circumstances like this,” he told . “And at the end of the day, we were going to … make sure that the facts were clear, and that those that had, in fact, violated their duty would be held accountable. And that’s exactly what happened.”

The grand jury’s recounting of the case seemed to shed more light on the disturbing series of events than the political heat they generated.

The offender, just 14 years old at the time of the first attack on May 28, 2021, arranged to meet a classmate in the bathroom for a consensual encounter only to forcibly sodomize her. The victim’s father, who drove to campus soon after, was chastised by school officials for causing a ruckus at the front office. Administrators alerted parents to his behavior that day — not to the sexual assault. 

Even worse, parents said, school officials were warned more than two weeks earlier about the boy’s troubling behavior: A teaching assistant, writing to a superior at Stone Bridge High School about his infractions, ended with, “I wouldn’t want to be held accountable if someone should get hurt,” the grand jury found.

Parents were even more enraged by what came next: The boy was merely transferred to another school — rather than placed in a more secure setting — where he sexually assaulted and nearly asphyxiated another girl at his new campus on October 6, 2021.

The grand jury blamed the district for the second assault, attributing it to a “remarkable lack of curiosity” and “adherence to operating in silos.” Among the more surprising revelations: A special education teaching assistant walked into the bathroom during the first assault, saw two sets of feet in one of the stalls and did nothing about it.

The report also noted a June 22, 2021, school board meeting in which the superintendent said, in response to a question, “to my knowledge, we don’t have any records of assaults occurring in our restrooms.” He was lying, the grand jury found: He and other school staff had already discussed the offense. Ziegler has said he thought he was being asked if they had records of any transgender or gender-fluid students assaulting other students in school bathrooms.

And there was a lead up, too, to the second assault. On Sept. 9, the boy grabbed a girl aggressively, tapped her head with a pencil and asked if she posted nude photos online. He asked another boy in his class “if his grandmothers’ nudes were posted online,” according to the report.

The superintendent, deputy superintendent and chief of staff were alerted to these incidents and knew this was the same boy involved in the earlier assault, the grand jury reported. 

“Despite having a 12-page disciplinary file, wearing an ankle monitor, being closely monitored by the Broad Run principal, knowledge of this incident by the highest administrators in LCPS … the individual received nothing more than a verbal admonishment,” they wrote. 

A juvenile court judge found sufficient evidence to sustain the charges in the first assault in October 2021 and the teen pleaded no contest to the charges in the second assault a month later. The judge to receive treatment, counseling and full rehabilitation at a locked residential facility until he turns 18, noting, “This one scares me.”

Erin Poe, who has three sons in the district, said she was devastated upon learning the scope of school administrators’ dishonesty and ineptitude. 

“I cannot imagine what this has done to the girls’ lives,” she said, adding she laments the district’s “unconscionable” decision to hide this news from families and move the offending student to another campus. “The entire situation was handled so poorly, from the victims to the child who committed these acts. All the way around, things need to change.”

Poe, co-founder of , an activist group, told �鶹��Ʒ she’s grateful for the Republican governor’s intervention: She voted for Youngkin and hopes he’ll help expose the district’s wrongdoings. 

“I was happy to see Youngkin was going to make Loudoun County an example,” she said, adding his involvement, “would make it harder for them to do things the way they want — rather than the way it should be handled.”

But Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, said Youngkin’s role has gone “above and beyond.” He said the investigation into the district’s handling of the case could have happened without him. 

“I think it’s just part of his politics to continue to come across as the champion of education in Virginia — and a champion of parents’ rights,” said Domenech, who lives in Virginia and has closely watched Youngkin’s ascent and the scandal plaguing the Loudoun schools.

He said both Youngkin and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — alongside Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who during the pandemic — are “out of line.” 

He cited DeSantis for removing board members from Broward County schools this summer after a grand jury accused them of related to their role in managing a campus security program. DeSantis ordered the grand jury to investigate the district after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in 2018. 

That probe also resulted in the 2021 indictment on felony perjury charges of former Broward County schools Superintendent Robert Runcie, of the hardline governor. Runcie has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

“DeSantis has gotten himself involved in education to a level we have never seen,” Domenech said. “He’s, in a number of school districts, removed board members, appointed board members — which is really a local election process. I’ve been in this business for 55 years and have never seen anything like this.”

In Loudoun County, the parents of the second victim had little use for school leadership across the board, according to a statement they issued after the release of the grand jury’s report.

“The senior leaders at both high schools, along with the Loudoun County Public Schools and the School Board members, should be reminded that our fifteen-year-old daughter displayed more courage and leadership when she reported what happened to her to the Sheriff’s Resource Officer than any of them ever did,” they said. “The ineptitude of all involved is staggering.”

Disclosure: Andy Rotherham is a member of the Virginia Board of Education and sits on �鶹��Ʒ’s board of directors. He played no role in the reporting or editing of this story. 

Late Thursday, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a preliminary injunction in a suit challenging the employer portion of Florida’s Stop W.O.K.E. Act, suspending enforcement of the law in the workplace. The Obama-nominated judge wrote in his Honeyfund v. DeSantis : 

“In the popular television series Stranger Things, the ‘upside down’ describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world. Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down. Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely. But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely.”

A separate lawsuit filed Thursday morning challenges the portion of the law that applies to colleges and universities.

A federal lawsuit filed Thursday charges that a Florida law designed to “fight back against woke indoctrination” by limiting classroom discussions of race and gender violates the constitutional free speech rights of college students and professors.

Florida’s Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees (Stop W.O.K.E.) Act took effect July 1. It prohibits workplaces and schools from requiring training or instruction that may make some people feel they bear “personal responsibility” for historic wrongdoings because of their race, gender or national origin.

But Jerry Edwards, staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida, one of the legal organizations behind the case, said the law unconstitutionally censors the free expression of higher education students and educators.

“The Stop W.O.K.E. Act is a shameful result of propaganda and fearmongering,” he said in a statement. “A free state does not seek to curtail the inalienable right to free expression in its college and university classrooms.”

The Florida Department of Education did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Florida is one of 17 states that have sought to restrict how educators cover topics related to race and gender, according to a . 

However, it’s the only state that applies its censorship law to higher education, said Leah Watson, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program.

“There is a longstanding history in the Supreme Court and courts across our country of recognizing the freedom of professors, lecturers and educators in higher education to determine what to teach and how to teach it,” she told �鶹��Ʒ. 

Seven Florida professors and one undergraduate are named as plaintiffs, represented by the national ACLU, ACLU of Florida, NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the law firm of Ballard Spahr. The suit names the state university system’s board of governors and several other officials as defendants. It requests an injunction seeking an immediate halt to enforcement of the bill in colleges and universities.

Plaintiff Russell Almond is an associate professor teaching statistics at Florida State University and covers how to use race as a variable in empirical research. Provisions in the Stop W.O.K.E. Act that prohibit educators from presenting “colorblind” ideologies as racist put his teachings in jeopardy, the lawsuit charges.

Another professor, Dana Thompson Dorsey, will teach a course in “Critical Race Studies: Research, Policy and Praxis” at the University of South Florida this school year. She fears that explaining how racism is embedded in American institutions — a central aspect of the scholarly framework — could put her in violation of the law. While the Sunshine State does not explicitly ban Critical Race Theory, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office has said the law is intended to .

“In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida,” DeSantis said after he signed the bill into law in April.

The act forces many educators to present foundational principles of their disciplines in a “false light,” presenting them as “disputed when it’s honestly not,” said Watson. 

Plaintiff Johana Dauphin, a senior at Florida State University, worries that she will be ill prepared for graduate school if the law interferes with her professors’ ability to convey key understandings that students in other states receive.

“I fear that this law will cause my professors to avoid discussing race and gender altogether, which will result in my perspective and lived experience as a Black, female student being effectively minimized and erased in the classroom,” said Dauphin. “As a student, I deserve to see myself and the issues that impact me — including issues around race and gender — reflected in my classroom discussions.”

Thursday’s filing marks the third lawsuit the ACLU has brought against a statewide censorship law. Similar cases in Oklahoma and have yet to be decided.

A previous legal challenge seeking to prevent the Stop W.O.K.E. Act from taking effect was dismissed by a federal judge in June. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker clarified in a 23-page order that he was not “determining whether the challenged regulations are constitutional, morally correct or good policy.” Rather, the four plaintiffs — two professors, a student and a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant — .

Other lawsuits challenging the Florida law remain undecided. At an early August hearing, Walker appeared to arguments leveled against the state by several businesses, including a Ben & Jerry’s franchise. The federal judge emphasized the vagueness of a particular section that labels training discriminatory if it causes an employee to believe a person of “one race, color, sex, or national origin cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race, color, sex or national origin.”

“Apparently, I’m a person of below-average intelligence, because I have no idea what that means,” said Walker.

John Ohlendorf, an attorney representing the state, defended the provisions: “The state of Florida has a compelling interest in preventing employers from forcing employees to listen to speech that suggests one race is inherently superior to another.”

The case brought Thursday is “framed differently” than prior challenges, Watson said. It has yet to be assigned, but it’s possible Walker could be the one to review it. Should that happen, the ACLU hopes for a speedy ruling, as he has moved in a matter of weeks on previous decisions around the bill. 

“We’re confident the Stop W.O.K.E. Act unconstitutionally infringes upon academic freedom and students’ right to learn,” said Watson. “I’m not able to comment predicting what the court may say.”

With civics instruction in public schools becoming increasingly controversial, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a set of three new “civics career academies” on Monday, designed to give high school students skills that could lead to political and government jobs.

DeSantis touted the academies as a “one-of-its-kind work program” for politically engaged students, at a news conference in Jacksonville.

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Central Florida’s Polk State College, Broward College in South Florida, and Florida State College at Jacksonville — all community colleges — have been tapped to host the new civics academies. They are scheduled to launch in the fall of 2023.

But questions arose Monday about the new initiative, such as who will develop the curriculum for the academies? Where did the money come from for the project, and why were those three particular colleges chosen?

DeSantis mentioned $6.5 million but it isn’t clear which pot of money will be used to house the academies.

The DeSantis administration’s handling of civics education has previously been under scrutiny.

In late June, the Miami Herald reported that local educators were concerned about new state civics professional development trainings. Some teachers found the trainings to be skewed towards a Christian fundamentalist interpretation of American history and founding documents, according to the Herald.

A non-profit organization aiming to ensure the separation of church and state through public records requests on Florida’s new civics training. The goal is to see how conservative groups, such as the Michigan-based Hillsdale College and the Koch-founded Bill of Rights Institute in Virginia, were involved in developing the contentious training.

Now, with the three civics academies announced, how will the public know if the initiative will be a partisan effort to funnel conservative-leaning kids into state jobs and politics? Or, could the effort be completely nonpartisan?

Monday, DeSantis described the initiative, saying, “They (students) will be provided the knowledge base and the tools to potentially have a career in public service. They will be linking students with things like apprenticeships, internships — this is something, I mean, think about the applications here.”

He added: “Someone that wants to go into local government and become, like, a county manager, people that wanna work in a state agency — you know, what kind of a foundation are they having? And this is really what we’re providing here: the ability for them to really excel. And, if you go through a lot of this and you choose to do other stuff, this is still gonna be very helpful for what you’re gonna be doing. ”

According to a Monday press release from the governor’s office:

“Courses will include public service leadership, careers and communication, experiential learning, pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship opportunities with local and state agencies, and a research seminar.”

Angela Falconetti, president of Polk State College, laid out a few names of agencies and institutions that might be involved in developing these academies.

“This training initiative is a collaboration between the Florida Department of Education… also the University of Central Florida’s Lou Frey Institute,” she said at the Monday press conference.

Falconetti added: “Polk State (College) in partnership with Polk County public schools will develop civics careers academies to build an integrated, seamless program of study in the government and public administration discipline — from high school through postsecondary education. We will also partner with local businesses and government entities and program design and delivery.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

TAMPA — Claiming that Florida schools are undergoing “leftist indoctrination,” a “leftist agenda,” and “sexualization of children,” Gov. Ron DeSantis called on hundreds of members of “Moms For Liberty,” gathered in Tampa Friday, to fight.

“You’ve got to stand up and you’ve got to fight,” DeSantis said in a keynote speech to the conservative, nearly all-white audience, estimated at 500, in a Tampa hotel. “You’re going to take fire. They’re going to shoot arrows at you.”

The governor, running for reelection, won repeated cheers and standing ovations from the members, wearing badges identifying them as being from states as distant as Hawaii and New York.

“They cannot wait to vote for him for president,” said Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice, introducing DeSantis at the Friday morning keynote. The audience stood, cheered, and waved “DeSantis” signs and “Mamas For DeSantis” signs — the latter referring to a group recently founded by First Lady Casey DeSantis.

DeSantis focused on “the free state of Florida,” where he largely has blocked COVID protocols recommended by federal health authorities and pushed new laws empowering parental authority over school boards.

“Our school systems are for educating kids, not indoctrinating them,” DeSantis said, citing his administration’s rejection of “woke” math textbooks and its ban on teachers “forcing sexuality and gender ideology in elementary schools.”

Florida Democrats, assembled in an adjacent hotel for their annual leadership conference, countered that DeSantis is lying about educational achievement in Florida to recruit conservative parents behind his political ambitions, which include an anticipated run for the presidency in 2024.

Harassment

Brevard County School Board member Jennifer Jenkins, a teacher and Democrat who says she was harassed and threatened for her pro-mask position at the height of the pandemic, said Florida schools are 9,000 instructors short as the fall term approaches.

And they rank 43rd nationally in education funding and 48th in average teacher salaries — not because of masks, critical race theory, or gender issues touted by conservatives, she said. (National Education Association research shows Florida’s average teacher pay at $51,009, ranking 48th in the nation, based on 2020-21 data. For per-student spending, the NEA data show $10,703, ranking 44th in the nation.)

“Our teacher shortage is a DeSantis decision,” Jenkins said, arguing that Florida schools have fallen behind during 20 years of leadership mostly by Republicans. Jenkins said she based her support for temporary masking in Brevard schools on local evidence, including the COVID deaths of 10 staff members.

Notably, Jenkins defeated her Republican incumbent opponent, Tina Descovich, who soon after joined with two other school board members to found Moms For Liberty. Jenkins said voters chose her over Descovich because she supported masking in schools, as they did.

“It’s not about kids. It’s about an obsession with power,” said Democratic Party Chairman Manny Diaz, who argued DeSantis and other top Republicans are, like former President Trump, fueling conspiracy theories that erode public trust in science, the judiciary, and professional news media.

Scott Hottenstein, public education chair for the Florida Democratic Party and a former civics teacher, said conservative opposition to “critical race theory” is based on such a conspiracy.

“We don’t teach critical race theory in Florida,” Hottenstein flatly stated. “Parents want all of history to be taught … without being censored by politicians.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

But one bill signed into law didn’t get any attention, and it was important.

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HB 235 bans most school personnel from using handcuffs, zip-ties, straightjackets or other devices on students who act out or misbehave in a way that poses a threat to themselves or others. The ban begins on July 1.

Only school resource officers, school safety officers, school guardians, or school security guards can use these mechanical restraints on students in grades 6 through 12 — but not children in younger grades.

The bill also deals with physical restraints. In that category, school personnel can use physical restraints — meaning restricting students’ movements — but only when other behavior interventions have been exhausted.

These incidents can be traumatic, particularly for students with disabilities.

HB 235 received unanimous bipartisan support from the House and Senate during the 2022 session.

The legislation builds off previous efforts to limit how teachers and other school personnel handle students who might be acting out in a dangerous manner.

According to Florida Department of Education data, the use of mechanical restraints for disciplinary purposes on a student was used 43 times throughout the 2020-21 school year.

The use of physical restraints occurred 1,867 times in that same year.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

On Friday, DeSantis signed legislation () to allow parents greater opportunity to review, and potentially object to, school library books that they find “inappropriate,” with the goal of removing questionable material from school libraries, even if other families are okay with the content.

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Critics fear the result will be a wave of book challenges in school libraries, potentially pulling books off of shelves regarding LGBTQ people and racism in the United States pending review of these materials and perhaps permanently.

Still, DeSantis praised the effort.

“What this is going to do is it’s going to require transparency with respect to materials that are being taught in classrooms and what’s available in school libraries,” he said Friday during a bill-signing ceremony in Volusia County.

The event took place at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, a private institution, and the governor took no questions from reporters. Several Florida lawmakers and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran joined him.

DeSantis argued the new law, effective July 1, 2022, will provide parents the ability to review and object to materials that they find to “deviate from state standards or just to be inappropriate.”

“We have the ability to choose what is appropriate for different age groups,” he said.

“Adults have access to whatever they want to have access to but, when you’re talking about some of these kids, particularly young kids, you know, to have some of these really graphic stuff in there is not in the best interest in the parents or the students. So, parents are going to have the ability to have their voice heard.”

What the legislation does

The law works to integrate “public participation” in the material-selection process for school districts, meaning parents and community members would be more included when school districts consider new books and instructional materials.

Should parents or community members object to any materials, school boards must report those objections to the Department of Education.

The department will publish a list of “materials that were removed or discontinued as a result of an objection and disseminate the list to school districts for consideration in their selection procedures,” the law says.

All elementary schools would have to publish “in a searchable format” a list of materials in the school library or on a required reading list.

The law calls for the “regular removal or discontinuance of books based on, at a minimum, physical condition, rate of recent circulation, alignment to state academic standards and relevancy to curriculum, out-of-date content,” and additional reasons.

To LGBTQ advocates and others concerned with protecting free speech in schools, that forebodes censorship.

For example, following the bill signing, LGBTQ-advocacy group Equality Florida :

“T�ǻ岹�� @GovRonDeSantis continues his censorship and surveillance agenda by signing HB 1467, which anti-LGBTQ proponents have touted as an opportunity to ban more books in schools.

“This weaponizes the DOE, requiring it to publish a list of books banned by any school district & circulate it to all other districts. It’s an attempt to deprive even more students of access to educational materials, regardless of whether parents want them to have access.”

The bill follows a trend of books being pulled from school libraries in Florida and across the nation.

Free-Speech advocacy group PEN America identified HB 1467 as one of four Florida bills that “censor classroom subjects and ideas, according to a .

That group noted that it is “difficult to divorce the legislation (HB 1467) from its larger political context.”

“There is a underway across the country to ban books and instructional materials containing ‘objectionable’ content. Often, that content amounts to little more than an acknowledgment of LGBTQ+ identities or the existence of racism or sexism,” the organization said.

“The purpose of HB 1467 is to facilitate that campaign. By creating a centralized list of every objection leveled against a book, film, article, handout, or instructional software program somewhere in the state, school districts will be under enormous pressure to skirt all controversy and adopt only the safest, most anodyne materials possible. This may be a good strategy for avoiding controversy, but it is no way to educate a child. And if �� are any indication, first on the chopping block will be materials related to LGBTQ+ identities, sexuality, diversity, and racism.”

Book challenges in Florida

There have already been

A notable example is in central Florida, where the Polk County school district removed 16 books from school libraries in late January following complaints from parents,

These books have not been officially banned, as the titles are still under review, but students can’t check out these books in the weeks it takes for the district to review the them.

Many of these books discuss on the experiences of LGBTQ people. Some parents found contents too explicit and inappropriate for children.

One of the books is “I am Jazz,” which documents the life of a young transgender girl in South Florida. Another is “Two Boys Kissing,” which explores the experiences of young gay boys.

The books in the list are not just focused on LGBTQ issues, either.�� Two were written by the late author, Toni Morrison: “The Bluest Eye” and Pulitzer-prize winning “Beloved.”

As of Friday, only four books had been fully reviewed by committees selected to analyze the books, according to the district website.

Jason Geary, with the Polk County school district, told the Phoenix last week that none of the 16 books had been returned to school libraries, as they still require consideration by the district superintendent and a final decision from the Polk County school board.

The district is on spring break this week and the Phoenix was unable to receive an update.

School board term limits

HB 1467 also imposes

DeSantis says he’s a “big believer” in term limits on all levels of government, and said that term limits should be imposed on Congress as well, invoking a old Donald Trump tagline from when he ran for president.

“You know, I don’t see how you ‘drain a swamp’ when you have people there for 30 or 40 years,” DeSantis said. “It just doesn’t work that way. So, this is very good for school boards, and, you know, you don’t want little swamps in a school board either.”

During the legislative session, disagreements emerged between the House and Senate over how long these term limits should be. The House wanted board members to serve no more than eight years, but settled with the Senate on 12-year limits.

“While it’s not everything that the House wanted, or maybe what you wanted, governor, it represents a major step forward,” Rep. Sam Garrison, a Republican who represents part of Clay County, said during the Friday event. He sponsored the legislation as it went through the 2022 session.

, but backed down after a backlash and warnings against potential sexism (given the high proportion of women in these roles). Instead, he opted for term limits.

Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said that term limits are “long overdue” for Florida school board members, and referenced some of the bad blood between his department and a handful of school boards

DeSantis noted that Floridians do not have to wait for board members to term out.

“I’m a big believer in term limits,” he said, but added: “You know, you don’t always have to wait for that to attach, you can throw the bums out in the election.

“If they mistreated your kids, if they didn’t follow the law or they did all the, anything, you have the opportunity for many of them to be up for reelection.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

Gov. Ron DeSantis named Esther Byrd, a former Marine who lives in Neptune Beach, to the state board earlier this month. Because her appointment came on the last day of this year’s legislative session, her Senate approval will not take place until 2023, the governor’s press office told �鶹��Ʒ. 

“I am excited for the opportunity to serve the students and families of Florida on the Board of Education,” Byrd said in a March 14 statement released by Moms for Liberty, a conservative parent group that started in Florida in 2021 and now has chapters in 34 states. “Parents are extremely frustrated with being cut off from the decision-making process on issues impacting their children. I will work to amplify their voices, address their concerns, and fight to put children first.”

Byrd is the wife of Republican state Rep. Cord Byrd and works as a legal assistant in his office. According to his website, he’s a firearms law expert who handles many Second Amendment cases. 

Esther Byrd could not be reached for comment. Her appointment has sparked controversy because of her support for extremist views. 

“ANTIFA and BLM can burn and loot buildings and violently attack police and citizens,” Byrd wrote on her personal Facebook page. “But when Trump supporters peacefully protest, suddenly ‘Law and Order’ is all they can talk about! I can’t even listen to these idiots bellyaching about solving our differences without violence.”

. has appointed widely acknowledged believer Esther Byrd to Florida’s state Board of Education.

Background:

— Peter Schorsch ?? (@PeterSchorschFL)

Byrd, who served in the military from 2002 to 2010 and is president of the of Duval Federated, has also talked about an approaching ideological showdown.

“In the coming civil wars (We the People vs the Radical Left and We the People cleaning up the Republican Party), team rosters are being filled,” Byrd wrote. “Every elected official in DC will pick one. There are only 2 teams… With Us [or] Against Us.”

She’s announced her support for the state’s��, often called the “ bill. The Board of Education, according to the Florida Times Union, would for violations of the law.��

DeSantis Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a Miami radiologist, to the six-member board. Christie is currently the senior policy advisor for The Catholic Association and the treasurer of the Catholic Association Foundation.