Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has pushed policies that are driving teachers out of their profession. He knows exactly what he is doing. He favors charter schools and voucher schools, where teachers have no job security, no pensions.
Teachers are leaving public schools. They are quitting. DeSantis is getting what he wants.
BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2022 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — The Palm Beach County School District appears to be in desperate need of teachers as the new school year gets underway. The first day of school for students is August 10th. Several teachers tell BocaNewsNow.com that they — and their colleagues — are leaving their long-held positions due to what they call the politicization of teaching by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
“From ’Don’t Say Gay’ to other bizarre positions,” said one teacher who asked not be identified, ”teaching is no longer teaching. It’s politics. Politics should have no place in the classroom, unless it’s actually a class about politics.”
“We have elementary school students who have same-sex parents,” said another teacher at a Palm Beach County elementary school. ”Are we really not allowed to acknowledge that? If we get fired, we lose benefits. If we resign now, we get what we have. This is why so many teachers are leaving. The Governor got it wrong.”
While the school district has been transmitting email blasts — and taking to social media — to promote job fairs and open positions, a check of the actual ”help wanted” website reveals just how dire the situation appears to be. As of noon on July 31st, 2022, a search of the word ”teacher” on the official Palm Beach County School District employment website yielded 1,784 jobs. While we did not review each and every listing, a spot check of several listings suggests that the openings are real. They range from full-time gifted to part-time continuing education. They range from Eagles Landing Middle School in Boca Raton to schools in all parts of the county.
It’s not just teachers. Transportation Services is also in need of bus drivers. The need is so great that the school district is offering a $1000 signing bonus to new transportation department employees.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, Duh …
As Bob Shepherd would say, FloriDuh.
According to the media there are over 9,000 teaching vacancies in Florida public schools. Bush, Scott and DeSantis have all implemented policies to undermine public schools and frustrate teachers. The attacks from DeSantis have been the most absurd, and some parents, even conservative parents, believe DeSantis has gone too far. Yet, they will still likely vote for Republicans because they have tribal allegiance to the Republican Party.
You are right. It amazes me how Floridians, even in red counties, will vote to raise their own taxes (sales taxes for capital expenditures and/or property taxes for payroll and programs) to support public schools yet send people to Tallahassee and DC who will do everything to spread money to charters and private schools on the same ballot.
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/406896-charter-schools-win-tax-fight/
https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/2019/04/10/bill-in-florida-house-would-require-school-districts-to-share-local-referendum-money-with-charter-schools/
Floridians vote for class size limits in the constitution yet send politicians to Tallahassee who created a bunch of loopholes to undermine the measure.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/fl-class-size-choice-20151120-story.html
Florida produces the 3rd highest amount of abortions in the country, yet vote for Scott, DeSantis, and Trump.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/03/florida-abortion-00035799
On and on…
Here’s the wording of the Florida law:
“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
Can you say Chris has two mommies? The state says no.
Can you say Chris has a mother and a father? Not if this is read literally.
Can you say Chris is a boy or a girl? Again, not if this is read literally.
Can you use he/his in referring to a student or a male colleague? Not if this is read literally.
Can you say that Kaitlin Jenner won the Olympics competing as a man? Is it safe to talk about her at all?
Of course, these rules do not apply to charter or voucher schools.
key point in your summation: Of course, these rules do not apply to charter or voucher schools.
Huffpo posted an article today about librarians being driven from their jobs. Groups like “Moms for Liberty and Catholic Vote” are identified as the driving force.
(“The Right Wing Plot to Destroy Public Libraries”)
At some point in the future, media reporting will pivot and recognize that the right wing’s work is aimed at elimination of professional jobs dominated by women. It’s part of the campaign to take rights from women.
Right wing religion’s promoters provide a platform for Moms for Liberty. Those promoters find that using women as a front is advantageous so, a woman’s face is at the National Right to Life, at Americans for Life and Moms for Liberty. Women will betray other women to make book for themselves, to please the leaders of their conservative religion and/or out of resentment for women who have gained financial independence.
Conservative Catholics are winning. After the formation of the political alliance between evangelicals and Catholics, the largest protestant denomination, driven by Paige Patterson, a former leader, joined with the Catholic view prohibiting women from clergy positions.
Re: Using women as a front
Just like they did with school “choice.” There was audio on the Florida Education Association’s podcast of one of the leaders of the voucher program distributors at a conference or something telling voucher proponents in other states to use pictures of minorities to sell the program.
The PR and political machines of the right wing, which includes the bishops, are very good at what they do.
Media reported that the VP of EdChoice in Kentucky is the associate director of the Kentucky Catholic Conference. The overwhelming majority of 50 state Catholic Conference leaders are men.
The political power of the conservative churches will only lessen when women abandon the churches.
what should be headlining the news: “At some point in the future, media reporting will pivot and recognize that the right wing’s work is aimed at elimination of professional jobs dominated by women. It’s part of the campaign to take rights from women.”
No, ciedie….
They may be out to control women, however in this case that is a side issue. They are out to dumb-down our society in order to control it through inane propaganda.
Taking away the right that women (and, men) had for 50 years, Roe v Wade, didn’t have its impetus in, “dumbing down” society. Arguments could be floated that the result of the added births will be either lower or higher average I.Q.’s for the country.
The source of the agenda has be assessed to draw conclusions about intent. Conservative men are both strongly racist and sexist. They are driven by White over Black, men over women, Christian over non-Christian and straight over gay. Neither Charles Koch nor the leaders of the most politically powerful religion in the U.S., Catholic, are strongly driven by a desire for workers to have lower I.Q.’s. They both do benefit from keeping wealth concentration as it is and they achieve that through the election of Republicans, many of whom, at the state level, are members of Koch’s ALEC..
Linda…
Ciedie? indicated that the reason for the DeSantis approach was because he wanted to attack women. I pointed out that he might not like women, however attacking education was probably more likely based upon not wanting an educated populace. Not sure why you disagree.
Which brings us to ‘identity politics’, a method of dividing a substantial portion of the public against another substantial portion based upon such things as race, or sex, and, thus, encouraging their antipathy in order to negate any reaction to the ruling class.
Were Catherine the Great and Lucretia Borges the epitome of democratic rulers? Hillary Clinton destroyed the most ‘advanced’ government in Africa and the resulting mess re-instituted slave markets. Was she evil, or incompetent?
Time to focus on policy, not ‘race’ or ‘sex’.
Daedalus,
Ciede, directly, and you, indirectly, replied to my comment which made a point, national in scope. You and I will agree to disagree that silence is the better approach to women losing their rights. You and I may be making different assessments about the effort and likelihood that White women can be switched to Democratic voting with political messaging vs. the switch of White men, currently voting GOP. to Democratic. (Of course, the less difficult task would be to get Democratic voters to the polls.)
I don’t understand the relevance of you selecting and citing women e.g. Hillary who you believe failed in leadership when, obviously there are men you could identify who also failed. Research has shown that people view minorities in a setting (women are a minority in elected government) as representative of the whole, a burden that is not similarly applied to the majority.
If Catholic Vote is successful in its spending to defeat Catholic Democrats, there will be 25 fewer women in the U.S. House out of the current 122 women. You and I can disagree about Catholic Vote’s intent.
Totally agree that there are plenty of nasty men out there, but they aren’t nasty because they are men, or because they are white. I also agree the women shouldn’t be silent about losing their rights. I simply made the point that this issue (DeSantis trying to kill public education) wasn’t an attack upon women. It was an attack upon education.
I’m a bit chagrined at a repeated misunderstanding. When I write conservative men, GOP men, GOP Catholics or conservative Catholics, by identification, I have singled out a segment and am not referring to the whole.
I distinguished White voters from Black voters because around 90% of Black people are already voting Democratic.
Linda,
I live in Tennessee. Let me tell you that there are plenty of ‘religious’ women who are pushing to take away the right of women to control their lives. I’m amazed that they want to ‘surrender themselves’ to ‘Jesus’. Of course, ‘Jesus’ had nothing to say on the issue, but …
In 2016, about 50% of White women voted for Trump, about 60% of White men.
“After the Roe decision, in Kansas, the share of new registrants who were women skyrocketed.” (Taken from a polling group’s summary.)
If ever kids need teachers – teachers with mission, compassion, and skill it is now.
But there’s a teacher shortage – unprecedented.
The short term and long term psychological damage of what we read daily is devastating.
And, “The children ARE watching” – and experiencing and feeling.
They are getting powerful life-remembering signals from adults they trust and count on that they (adults) are NOT there for them. At no fault of those teachers who care as deeply as one can – but have reached their limit.
Kids are hearing the teacher they idolize say, “I can’t answer your question.”
When someone is bullying or teasing Chris (example above) because his/her picture of his family has two mommies, the teacher can’t diffuse the situation “Yes, Chris has two mommies all families are different, and let’s talk about that.”
Teachers and counselors are muzzled –
They’ll be told to stick to the script – a script that will include, “We can’t talk about that.”
They have to worry someone is looking over their shoulder or that some parent has turned their kid into a whistleblower to tell on their teacher if s/he uses the wrong book or says anything.
So, yes, there’s a teacher shortage!
Covid year 2 was an absolute different set of issues than the logistics of year 1.
And, it is NOT that kids came back behind in reading and math, they came back having missed two years of socialization.
The kids were two years older but but not two years more mature – and for middle school – this is all while their hormones are kicking in. Teachers dealt with behaviors and social issues daily that used to pop up a couple of times a year. They knew any day an instagram from the weekend or a tik-tok challenge was going to cause an outburst in their room.
Yeh, there’s a teacher shortage!
Fascists like Ron DeSantis have to control education at every level so it is easier to program the masses to be obedient to ruthless fascist masters like him.
The fascists can’t do that to the existing public education system so they have to get rid of it and replace it with private sector schools, charters, et al, that they control at every step.
Teachers must bow and obey the fascists.
Students must bow and obey the fascists.
Parents must bow and obey the fascists.
And eventually everyone will be forced to bow and obey the fascists, without question.
The last thing an oligarchy and a resulting police state wants is an educated pubic.
Western Europe has the strongest democracies. In general, what they don’t have is conservative religion congregants in the number that the U.S. does. 80+% of evangelicals and 63% of White Catholics who attend church regularly voted for Trump in 2020. Those groups are prominent Republican voters in states that have disproportionate electoral college votes.
If you want to make the claim that uneducated or less bright people choose conservative religion, the SCOTUS jurists, Leonard Leo, Steve Bannon, Pat Cipollone, William Barr, Harvard Prof. Adrian Vermuele, and Princeton Prof. Robert P. George, to name a few, would challenge the notion.
The governments of Mussolini, Hitler and Orban were/are advanced by the priests that Jefferson warned about, in every country, in every age, the priest aligns with the despot.
The most orthodox, devout, theologically conservative Christians in America are Black people. Yet, this group votes overwhelmingly for Democrats.
So, when talking about “evangelical” support for Republicans and/or their fascist policy proposals, it’s important to put “white” in front of the term as a qualifier.
Yep…
And lest we forget, ‘religion’ has been used for millennia to ‘keep the masses in line’. That old, old alignment between minority rulers and religion to suppress the majority.
Yeah,
Thanks for adding comment. Based on what I’ve read, only about 5% of Black women vote Republican. But, 18% of Black men voted for Trump. Is there reason to be concerned that there is a male patriarchy in Black churches that align with Catholic bishops in their view about women’s roles? Or, is the situation explained by factors other than religion?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts on the subject.
I do think, Linda, that there’s a significant reason to be concerned by religion (particularly the monotheistic ones). The ‘monotheists’ are all paternalistic, and expect women to accept a subservient position. I find the ‘division of labor’ in most ‘primitive’ cultures to be far better. Life might have been different in ancient Greece, or Rome, or India (etc.)
On the other hand, most children in those ‘primitive’ cultures entered into their ‘role’ at a rather young age. I’m thinking of Native American cultures, and in that society ‘oddballs’ were often considered ‘wise men (or women)’.
Recently, I’ve been thinking of the Phil Ochs song, ‘Miranda’. Whenever I hear that name, I think of Shakespeare. Now, I don’t know what Ochs meant, however his ‘chorus’ could well have applied to the naive teen who at least shared the spotlight with her father. The final line of that chorus was, ‘She bakes brownies for the boys in the band’. This is the European (not universal) picture of a ‘woman’s place’, and it was (for sure) religion that helped enforce that role. No women as priests? No female Pope? Odd, because most ‘churchgoers’ are women. Why do they do it?
Linda,
In my neighborhood, wealth disparity is pretty popular as an issue. However, it has never been pushed because money is needed for advertising time, and money doesn’t want that message to get out.
Daedalus,
The points in both of your comments are well taken.
Daedalus
I just don’t see dumbing down as an effective message that will compel voters in the way that a message framed like the following will, “They’re taking away women’s jobs in classrooms and libraries, impoverishing families,” “They’re taking away your liberty to read what you want,” and, “They’re forcing pregnancies on you because of the beliefs of their Puritanical clergy.”
May not be an effective message, however it is the goal.
So far, “I’m a woman” hasn’t proven ‘effective’, either. Tends to alienate ‘non-women’, who comprise half the population (or more, depending on you definition of ‘woman’).
I don’t vote for ‘the Squad’ because they’re women. I vote for them because I like their policies.
I’ve been surprised that wealth concentration hasn’t worked as a message.
You and I are already voting Democrat. I’m curious which demographic currently voting GOP you think can be switched to Democrat and with what message? The idea of switching the segment, working class men who are White, has been researched by political strategists and somewhat dismissed.
Guns, Jesus, babies worked before Roe to solidify the GOP.
Driving While Intoxicated
He’s driving folks to drink
The Coolaid, from his jug
And none of them will think
DeSantis is a thug”