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How Florida Cheats Public School Students By Lavishly Funding Kids in Non-Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2026 //
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The Network for Public Education reposted this analysis of school funding in Florida by Sue Kingery Woltanski. She was not surprised to discover that the state provides much more aid to students in non-public schools than to those in public schools. Imagine what a difference that money would make if it were directed to public schools, where it belongs. Florida now subsidizes the tuition of every student in private schools, religious schools, and home schools. Most of that state money goes to students who never attended public schools. Florida is underwriting the

In this post, Sue Kingery Woltanski breaks down the finances in just one Florida district to show how taxpayer-funded vouchers are actually resulting in more taxpayer dollars going to private schools than to public ones. Reposted with permission. 

What Monroe County’s numbers reveal about Florida’s broken school funding priorities
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UT3ALNtP1/

I saw this image today, and it prompted me to take a closer look at the numbers for my Florida school district: Monroe County.

SURPRISE! Here is the state funding breakdown for Monroe:

  • Monroe’s 8,457 Public School students (district and charter) receive $181.86 each from the state (for a total of  $1,537,924).
  • While Monroe’s 743 Family Empowerment Scholarship voucher recipients receive $6,786.03 each from the state (for a total of $5,040,326).

What if that $5,040,326 was used to fund Monroe’s public school students instead? Per pupil funding would be nearly $600 more per pupil, which could translate into teacher raises of $8,000/year or a reduction in class sizes, expanded electives,  richer learning experiences, or some combination of all of the above – all of which could directly improve classrooms and student learning

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, DeSantis, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Inequity, Privatization, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: The Death of Public Schools in Florida?

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2026 //
1

Jeff Bryant, a veteran education journalist, dissects he plan to destroy public schools. Governor Ron DeSantis and the Legislature has unleashed the for-profit vultures to pick the bonds and funds of the state’s public schools. Not because the charges are better schools, but because the rightwingers have close ties to members of the legislature. Want to open a charter school? Want the state to pay all your expenses? Come on down to the Sunshine State!

This article was produced by Our Schools. Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Bluesky@jeffbinnc.

The letters started coming in October 2025. In the first wave, according to the Florida Policy Institute (FPI), “at least 22 school districts in Florida” got letters alerting them that charter school operators, including a for-profit charter school management company based in Miami, intended to use a state law recently enacted to open new charter schools on the campuses of existing public schools beginning August 2027.

In Broward County, a South Florida district that includes Fort Lauderdale, the Mater Academy charter school chain, operated by for-profit charter management company Academica, claimed space in 27 public schools. Mater Academy claimed space in nearly 30 schools in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa Bay, “along with more than a dozen [schools] in Pinellas [County] and six in Pasco [County],” Tampa Bay Times reported. In Sarasota County, Mater claimed space in three public school campuses.

At least two more charter chains—New York-based Success Academy and New Jersey-based KIPP NJ—have joined in the campaign.

“So far, 480 schools in 22 counties have received 690 ‘letters of intent’ from charter school organizations expressing their intent to occupy space in public school buildings,” FPI’s Norin Dollard told Our Schools in late November. When schools receive letters from multiple charter organizations, it’s first come, first served, she explained, and the timeline for schools to respond is incredibly short—just 20 days.

Once the charter occupies part of the public school, Dollard explained, it operates rent free, and the public school district becomes responsible for much of the charter’s costs, including those for services charters don’t customarily provide, such as bus transportation and food service, as well as costs for school support services like janitorial, security, library, nursing, and counseling. Even any construction costs the charters might incur have to be covered by the public school.

This new law will force some public schools to convert to charter schools, said Damaris Allen, “and that’s intentional.” Allen is the executive director of Families for Strong Public Schools, a public schools advocacy organization that is rallying opposition to the law.

The letters have caught the attention of national news outlets, including the Washington Post, which reported, “The Florida law is an expansion of a state program called ‘Schools of Hope,’ which was set up to allow certain charters to operate in areas with low-performing local public schools. The new law allows ‘Schools of Hope’ operators to take over space at any public school that’s under capacity, regardless of whether it is high- or low-performing.”

“The expansion of the Schools of Hope idea has been on a slippery slope,” Dollard explained, “much like school vouchers have been in the state.” Originally, in 2017, schools identified for Schools of Hope transition from public governance to charter management were very narrowly defined as persistently underperforming schools. That changed in 2019 when the legislature altered the definition of low-performing to target more schools and added schools in so-called opportunity zones—government-designated areas selected for economic development—as open territory for charters. Now, the new law allows charter schools to take over “underused, vacant, or surplus” space in traditional public schools and operate free of charge.

As the reach of the Schools of Hope idea morphed, so did its rationale. According to a 2025 op-ed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the program was originally conceived as an “initiative that incentivizes high-quality charter operators to open schools for students trapped in failing ones.” The aim now, according to Bush, is to solve the “problem” of underutilized space in existing public schools.

With school enrollments in steep decline in nearly every district in the state, fear of a potential mass charter school industry takeover of public school spaces—along with the costs local districts will incur—looms over district leaders across the state and strikes them as a clear existential threat.

Other consequences of colocating more charters in public schools have not been well-thought-out, according to Allen. For instance, on the issue of school safety, public schools have undertaken a number of measures to protect against school shootings, such as converting buildings to single-point entry. Charter schools don’t have to do that. So what happens when a charter operation moves into a building and doesn’t comply with the single-point entry? Also, the state legislature created new rulesfor public school libraries in 2022. Charters don’t have to follow those rules. How is that going to work in a colocation?

Allen fears the daunting challenges of charter colocations will cause some school boards and communities to sell school buildings or convert them to district-operated charters rather than give in to charter schools run by outside, for-profit companies.

And while proponents of Florida’s Schools of Hope program see it as a way to expand education options for students and families, critics point to evidence that Florida charter schools, which one expert called “a shitstorm,” need stricter oversight rather than a free rein. And, regardless of the outcomes, they warn that the idea is sure to get promoted as an “education innovation” that other Republican-dominated states will likely adopt.

A warning sign, not a model

When Nancy Lawther, a retired college professor of French, got involved in public schools advocacy, she became very skeptical about the oft-told narrative about the need for more education options because “too many poor children are trapped in failing public schools.” After all, in Dade County, Miami, where she lives, the public system has an A rating by the state despite having a challenging student population that is overwhelmingly Hispanic, with many living in households earning less than the state’s median income.

Her skepticism only increased when she first heard about expanding the Schools of Hope program to more schools, especially when she saw the results from the first schools taken over.

The original “Schools of Hope” weren’t individual schools; it was a whole district. In 2017, the Jefferson County school board voted in favor of participating in a pilot project for the new Schools of Hope initiative. The board’s approval to join the pilot meant that the district was required to turn over the management of their schools to a “high-performing” charter management company, which, in this case, happened to be Somerset Academy, another charter chain managed by the for-profit Academica management company.

But the results of the pilot would be a warning sign about the abilities of charter management firms to improve the education outcomes of public schools. As a 2025 op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel recounted, “[T]axpayers saw higher costs, stagnant results, and constant staff churn. By 2022, the takeover collapsed. Local leaders called it ‘an absolute disaster.’ The state had to step in with a $5 million bailout just to get the district running again.”

A 2024 account of the pilot in the Tallahassee Democrat reported, “[F]rom 2017 to 2022,… [Jefferson County] remained troubled by students’ lagging academic performance and mounting disciplinary issues, like fighting that in one case led to the arrest of 15 students. … [And] the school district was still getting a D grade” from the state.

Nevertheless, after Florida lawmakers expanded the Schools of Hope program in 2019, which has cost more than $300 million as of 2025, “There are only about a dozen Schools of Hope in Florida. In 2024, eight of them got C or D grades,” pointed out the Bradenton Times.”

‘All about market share’

Given its track record of failure, Lawther suspects that expanding Schools of Hope has nothing to do with improving education outcomes or making better use of publicly funded school buildings.

Indeed, Sarasota County, one of the districts targeted for charter colocations, has been an A-rated system since the state created the grading system in 2004, according to the district website.

Also, in districts where there are enrollment slides, there are few signs that demand for charters will soak up excess building capacity. According to a 2025 analysis of Sarasota County by Suncoast Searchlight, “The number of charter schools has grown in recent years, but the share of students at charters has not shifted much.” And building utilization rates of the different sectors are nearly identical—82 percent for public schools and 84 percent for charters, WUSF stated. “Some of the lowest-performing charters are barely a third full.”

Mater Academy, the charter operator using the Schools of Hope law to claim space in Sarasota public schools, does not currently operate a school in the district.

“This is all about market share,” Lawther said. “It’s about getting an advantage over charter operators that are not Schools of Hope providers, and independent charters that can’t compete in a market geared to the large chains,” like those operated by Academica.

Further, while enrollments in Florida charter schools continued to grow, it has shown signs of slowing down—from 3.7 percent in 2024 to 2.6 percent in 2025—and the number of charter schools decreased, from 739 in 2023-2024 to 732 in 2024-2025.

Also, the charter industry in the state faces many more privately-operated competitors. “Expansions of voucher programs are creating a more competitive market for charter schools,” Lawther noted, “and private schools, microschools, and homeschooling are growing forms of school choice.”

Indeed, charter schools no longer appear to be the fastest-growing form of school choice in the state.

After the Republican-led Florida legislature passed a bill in 2023 that did away with income requirements for families to receive state-sponsored school vouchers, the share of state funding diverted from the public system—which, technically, includes charters—to private schools and homeschooling doubled from 12 percent in 2021 to 24 percent in 2025, WUSF reported. In the school year 2023-2024, the number of vouchers, often called “scholarships,” given out to help families pay for private school tuition and homeschooling increased by approximately 142,000 students, according to Next Steps, a school choice advocacy group.

Florida has also experienced a 46 percent increase in homeschooling over the past five years, WEAR statedin 2025. And the state has freed up 50,000 new community facilities to serve as microschools, according to the Center for American Progress.

It would seem that in this increasingly competitive education landscape, the Florida charter school industry could use a new competitive angle like the one offered by Schools of Hope. “Officially, charter school advocates say Schools of Hope is an amazing opportunity to expand parent choice,” Dollard said, “but unofficially, this is an incredibly lucrative business opportunity.”

An industry in decline?

The charter school industry’s desire for new business strategies that enable charter operators to seize public school classrooms—or even whole buildings—is not confined to Florida.

In Indiana, for years, public school districts have been required to notify the state, within 10 days, when one of their buildings becomes vacant and to make the building available to lease to a charter school for $1 per year or sell the building to a charter operator outright for $1.

In Ohio’s 2025 approved budget, a new provision allows the state to force school districts to close some public school buildings and sell those properties to charter or private schools “at below market value,” Ideastream Public Media reported.

Arkansas is also likely to adopt a Schools of Hope-like measure, Allen speculated, because its state secretary of education Jacob Oliva served in Florida. Oliva was Florida’s state education chancellor during the failed Schools of Hope pilot in Jefferson County.

One market condition that’s likely behind these increasingly aggressive charter school industry is land grab, as revealed in a 2025 analysis by the National Center for Charter School Accountability (NCCSA). According to the report, charter school closings have been accelerating nationwide, while the pace of new charter openings has slowed significantly during the same time.

“[T]he 2023-24 school year saw just 12 more open charter schools than during the previous year,” the report found. This is “a dramatic departure” from the heydays of industry growth when “[t]he number of charter schools increased by 421” between 2010 and 2011.

Charter school enrollment growth has also stalled, according to the report, increasing by 0.1 percentage point—from 7.5 percent to 7.6 percent of total charter enrollment—between 2020 and 2023.

In the most recent school years, based on official data from 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, NCCSA found, “Most states experienced declines or stagnation [in charter school market share], and preliminary indicators suggest that, once the 2024 data is finalized, the trend will likely worsen.”

North Carolina offers a clarifying example of the significant headwinds that the charter school industry now faces.

In the Tar Heel state, charter schools have enjoyed widespread support among state lawmakers and private investors. The state legislature has made dramatic changes to state laws regarding charters, including loosening regulations and fast-tracking approval of new schools. And a 2024 analysis by the Charlotte Observer found “at least $279 million in private equity investments in North Carolina charter schools since 2013.”

Despite this support, the number of charter schools in North Carolina declined in 2024-2025, from 211 to 208 in 2023-2024, according to an industry spokesperson. And many of the newest charter schools to open in the state have not fared well. “State data show that only about 26 percent of new charter schools in the past five years met or exceeded their enrollment projections,” NC Newsline reported, “and more than half of those that missed the mark are now closed or never opened.”

The report’s findings revealed that although charters tend to locate in low-income neighborhoods, they serve far fewer children from low-income families, fewer children who are English learners, and fewer children with disabilities, resulting in leaving traditional public schools with elevated needs and higher costs.

Critics of the Schools of Hope law noted that these industry shifts, as well as a historical tendency for education policies enacted in Florida to get picked up in other Republican-dominated states, will spur other states to adopt similar policies, regardless of any evidence that they might harm public schools.

“More generally,” Baker added, “Florida charter schools are a shitstorm, both underserving higher need populations and underperforming with those they do serve.”

‘A shitstorm’

Among the critics of Florida’s Schools of Hope legislation is Bruce Baker, a professor and chair of the department of teaching and learning at the University of Miami and an expert on charter schools and public school finances.

“I’m, of course, deeply concerned with granting preferential access to any charter operator, at the expense of a fiscally strapped school district,” Baker wrote in an email. “I’m more concerned when it may present a slippery slope regarding control over land and buildings that should—by the [state] constitution, which supersedes this regulatory change—be solely under the authority of the local boards of education elected by the taxpayers who financed those facilities and continue to maintain them. It becomes even more problematic if this eventually creates an avenue to transfer ownership. That would be a particularly egregious violation of local board authority and private taking of public assets. We aren’t there yet, but it’s a concern.”

Baker’s assessment of charter schools in the Sunshine State is evident in his 2025 report, which looks at the impacts of the industry on school funding adequacy, equity, and student academic outcomes across the state, and, more specifically, in the Miami-Dade district.

Also, charters, despite having an advantage of educating less challenging and less costly student populations, underperform public schools on state assessments while “serving otherwise similar student populations.” This finding holds statewide and in Miami-Dade.

The report concludes that Florida charters are “compromising equity, eroding efficiency, and producing poor educational outcomes for those it serves.”

Given these findings, the report recommends that state lawmakers “[i]mpose a moratorium on charter school expansion, including the Schools of Hope Program.” It also calls for “new regulations for evaluating existing charter operators,” stronger vetting of new charter operators, and stricter enforcement of regulations about charter school student outcomes.

Schools of nope

Several district school superintendents across Florida have urged their communities to oppose the state’s Schools of Hope charter school expansion in public school buildings. When the state’s current education commissioner defended the Schools of Hope law in his address at a 2025 conference for school board members and district leaders and suggested it could be used to shut down whole districts, the audience roundly booed him.

Grassroots groups such as Families for Strong Public Schools have held events to educate the public about the negative impacts of charter colocations. A coalition that includes the United Teachers of Dade, NAACP Miami-Dade Branch, the Miami-Dade County Council of PTA/PTSA, and others has formed to protest charter colocations. And a senator in the state legislature has introduced a bill to repeal the Schools of Hope expansion.

Much of the opposition has rallied under the banner of “Schools of Nope” and is organizing call-ins and an email campaign targeting state legislators.

Opposition organizers like Damaris Allen see this as a do-or-die moment in the state. “Either we win this fight, or it’s the death of public schools in Florida,” she said.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization, School Choice

Jason Garcia: Florida May Enact a Bounty Hunter Law to Reduce Abortions

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2026 //
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Jason Garcia, a veteran investigative reporter in Florida, reports on the ongoing scandals in the Sunshine State. In this post, he describes a new law that would offer generous bounties to anyone who helped to prevent an abortion arranged in other states. The law hasn’t passed yet, but its purpose is to stop women from accessing abortion drugs via telehealth.

He wrote:

Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature may turn husbands, fathers and brothers into bounty hunters who can block women from ending unwanted pregnancies.

A new bill filed in the Florida House of Representatives would dangle $100,000 prizes in front of private citizens who are willing to sue in order to stop a pregnant family member from obtaining abortion pills through the mail.

More specifically, House Bill 663 would allow a pregnant woman’s spouse, parents or siblings to sue anyone who tries to send her abortion medication — including doctors who prescribe the pills, drug companies that make them, shipping companies that transport them, even friends or other family members who help arrange delivery.

A successful lawsuit would come with a $100,000 payout — plus extra cash to pay lawyers and legal fees.

The Florida legislation is similar to a first-of-its-kind state law that just took effect in Texas. Right-wing groups have billed the Texas measure as a model for other anti-abortion states — like Florida, which bans most after just six weeks of pregnancy — that now want to stop women from accessing abortion services remotely from states where it is still permitted through telehealth and in-home medication.

Many abortion-supportive states around the country have in recent years enacted what are known as“shield laws.” These are laws that protect patients, doctors and others involved in reproductive healthcare from criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits brought under laws passed in anti-abortion states — just like the kind envisioned in House Bill 663. 

But the new Florida bill tries to weaken other states’ shield laws, too.

Shield laws often contain “clawback” provisions that enable someone who provides legal abortion care in their home state — but is then criminally charged or held civilly liable under the laws of another state — to sue in order to recover damages and recoup any costs they incurred in their legal defense.

House Bill 663 would forbid state courts from recognizing or enforcing any judgement issued under another state’s clawback law. What’s more, it would enable someone in Florida who is sued under an out-of-state clawback provision to then countersue in this state. 

House Bill 663 wouldn’t enable a father to sue his daughter or a brother to sue his sister; the legislation specifically prohibits lawsuits against a woman trying to obtain abortion medication for herself.

But women are still the true target here. The ultimate goal of legislation like this is to scare providers out of sending abortion pills to women who want them.

As the executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life — one of the anti-abortion groups that supported the new bounty hunter law in Texas — wrote in a recent column, “The ‘chilling effect’ is precisely the point.”

Categories DeSantis, Florida, Gender

Florida Approves Vast Expansion of Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2025 //
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Florida, under Ron DeSantis, is determined to defund its public schools.

The first charter law in Florida was passed in 1996, when Democrat Lawton Chiles was governor. The 1996 law said there could be no more than two charter schools in each district, and only local school boards could authorize them. When Chiles left office, the state had 17 charter schools.

From 1999-2007, Republican Governor Jeb Bush removed the caps on charters and encouraged their growth. By the end of his tenure, there were more than 300 charter schools.

Republican Charlie Crist vetoed aggressive charter legislation, but charters increased to more than 300 during his tenure in office (2007-2011).

Republican Rick Scott (2011-2019) strongly promoted school choice, reduced regulation, and the number of charters increased to about 650.

Far-right DeSantis is a cheerleader for charters and vouchers. Elected in 2019, DeSantis has aggressively expanded charters as well as vouchers, while reducing accountability.

Half of Florida’s charter schools operate for-profit. Over the years, nearly 500 charter schools have closed, due to maladministration, low enrollment, finances, or scandal.

Today, Florida has about 730 charter schools, which enroll 13.8% of the state’s students, about 400,000. The cost of charters is about $2.5-4 billion annually that should have gone to public schools.

The state’s Republican-controlled governor and legislature are dedicated to expanding private alternatives to public schools. In 2023, it removed income limits from vouchers, so that all private school students are now eligible to get a state subsidy. The number of students receiving vouchers doubled, from 250,000 to 524,000.

Before and since the voucher expansion of 2023, 70% of the voucher recipients were already enrolled in voucher schools. so Florida offers a subsidy to all students enrolled in private and religious schools regardless of family income.

Florida spends about $4 billion on vouchers each year, subsidizing mostly families who can pay for schooling without state aid.

Thus, between charters and vouchers, Florida is spending at least $6 billion annually on school choice.

Now, Florida has given charter operators another boon, allowing them to co-locate inside public schools. This alleviates their need for facilities funding.

Many Republican legislators have financial ties to the charter industry.

Kate Payne of the Associated Press wrote this story, which appeared in the Orlando Sentinel.

TALLAHASSEE (AP) — Florida’s board of education signed off Wednesday on a major expansion of charter schools in the state, clearing the way for the privately run schools to “co-locate” inside traditional public schools.

It’s the latest push by Florida officials to expand school choice in a state that has long been a national model for conservative education policy.

The move comes as some public schools are closing their doors as they grapple with declining enrollments, aging facilities and post-pandemic student struggles.The new regulations approved by the state board build on a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis this year to allow operators to open more “schools of hope,” charter schools that are meant to serve students from persistently low-performing schools.

Lawmakers created the schools of hope program in 2017 to encourage more publicly funded, privately run schools to open in areas where traditional public schools had been failing for years, giving students and families in those neighborhoods a way to bail out of a struggling school.

This year’s law loosens restrictions on where schools of hope can operate, allowing them to set up operations within the walls of a public school — even a high-performing one — if the campus has underused or vacant facilities.

The board’s new regulations require public school districts to provide the same facilities-related services to the charter schools as they do their own campuses, including custodial work, maintenance, school safety, food service, nursing and student transportation — “without limitation.

”School districts must allow schools of hope to use “all or part of an educational facility at no cost”, including classrooms and administrative offices, the rules read.

“All common indoor and outdoor space at a facility such as cafeterias, gymnasiums, recreation areas, parking lots, storage spaces and auditoriums, without limitation, must be shared proportionately based on total full-time equivalent student enrollment,” the rules continue.

Public school advocates urged the board to vote down the proposal at Wednesday’s meeting. One such advocate, India Miller, argued that schools of hope are designed to be “parasitic” to public schools.

“To me, it would be like asking Home Depot to give Lowe’s space in their store and pay all of their infrastructure costs. It just does not make sense to me,” Miller said.

Board members, who are appointed by DeSantis, defended the new rules and dismissed concerns that the charter expansion could pull critical funding away from traditional public schools.

“Schools of hope wouldn’t be necessary if our public school system had done its job along the way,” said board Vice Chair Esther Byrd.

Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi contributed reporting from Providence, Rhode Island. Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Categories Charter Schools, DeSantis, Florida, Funding, Privatization

Florida Eliminates All Vaccine Requirements for School Children

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2025 //
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In the world of science and medicine, vaccines have been one of the greatest achievements in history. Many diseases that afflicted humanity have been eradicated, thanks to vaccines.

When I was a child, my family worried about measles, mumps, chickenpox, and worst of all, polio. Now it’s rare to hear of anyone getting those diseases, although measles is making a comeback among unvaccinated children.

Only a crackpot would oppose vaccines whose safety and effectiveness have been demonstrated for decades.

We have at least two crackpots trying to discourage vaccinations. One is the nation’s top public health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a long record as a vaccine opponent.

Now there is the Surgeon General of Florida, Dr. Joseph A. Lapado. He has decided to eliminate all vaccine requirements for school children.

Make no mistake. This is dangerous. This encourages the spread of deadly diseases among children.

Florida plans to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren, rejecting a practice that public health experts have credited for decades with limiting the spread of infectious diseases.

Patricia Mazzini of The New York Times reported:

Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, made the announcement on Wednesday alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Mr. DeSantis rose to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, and over time he has espoused increasingly anti-vaccine views.

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Dr. Ladapo, a vocal denigrator of vaccines, said to applause during an event on Wednesday in Valrico, Fla., near Tampa. “Your body is a gift from God.”

He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Dr. Ladapo said.

Dr. Ladapo has faced repeated criticism from others in his field for his stances on public health. He allowed parents to choose whether to send unvaccinated children to school during a measles outbreak in Weston, Fla., in 2024, rejecting longstanding, evidence-based public health guidelines. The misinformation he spread about Covid vaccines prompted a public rebuke from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023.

It is unclear what the process of undoing the state’s longstanding vaccine mandates might look like. Dr. Ladapo said the Florida Department of Health, the agency he oversees, would do away with rules promulgating vaccine mandates. State lawmakers “are going to have to make decisions” as well, Dr. Ladapo said. “That’s how this becomes possible.”

All 50 states have at least some vaccination requirements for children entering school, though all allow for medical exemptions, and most allow exemptions for religious or personal reasons. The number of students receiving exemptions has been increasing in recent years, and immunization rates have been falling, according to KFF, a health policy research group.

Mr. DeSantis, who appointed Dr. Ladapo as surgeon general in 2021, also announced the creation of a commission to align Florida with goals laid out by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services and a vocal vaccine skeptic. The commission will be headed by Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife.

If Florida follows through on this nutty policy, the law should ban access to vaccines to the children of state officials who endorse this policy. No hypocrisy!

Categories Childhood, DeSantis, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Health, Medicine, Science, Stupid

Florida: DeSantis Criminalizes Street Art

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2025 //
4

Governor Ron DeSantis wants the world to know that he’s a tough guy. He may wear white boots in heavy rain, but he is very, very tough. To demonstrate how tough he is, he’s made a very big deal out of cracking down on street art. It may be pretty, but it WON’T be tolerated!

So, he had the Florida State Department of Transportation paint over the rainbow-colored stripes on the crosswalks in front of the Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were massacred in 2016. The Pulse is a gay nightclub, and the stripes were intended as a memorial to those who died.

Nine years later, DeSantis had the memorial painted over and restored the original black and white stripes. To prove that he wasn’t picking on gays, he had the Department paint over other street art.

Some admirers of the Pulse memorial were nonetheless outraged, and a few of them restored the rainbow colors with chalk. They were arrested for criminal activity. Their lawyer said the charges were extreme because the rain washed the chalk away. No evidence, no crime. The state wants the makefactors to pay $1562 for the “damage” they inflicted on the street.

If you live in Florida, don’t let your children use chalk to create hopscotch games. It’s dangerous to them, to your pocketbook and to DeSantis’ peace of mind.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

Gov. Ron DeSantis defended Tuesday the arrest of protesters accused of using chalk to color a crosswalk near the Pulse memorial in defiance of the state’s crackdown on street art.

“You don’t have a First Amendment right to commandeer someone else’s property,” DeSantis said at an Orlando event. “You have a First Amendment right to paint your own property. Knock yourself out if that’s what you want to do. But when you have a state crosswalk or a state road, the law in the state of Florida is now that there’s not markings.”

Tensions have reached a boiling point over the state’s decision to remove a pro-LGBTQ rainbow crosswalk near the former gay nightclub where 49 people were shot and killed in 2016. Four people were arrested over the Labor Day weekend and accused of interfering with a traffic control device.

The Florida Highway Patrol has been stationed near the crosswalk for days. Troopers were sent there after protesters used colored chalk to return the crosswalk back to its rainbow pattern. A back-and-forth battle emerged with protesters coloring the crosswalk and then state crews restoring it to its standard black-and-white pattern.

Late last week, the state put signs at the intersection instructing visitors that defacing the roadway or sidewalk was prohibited
State Attorney Monique Worrell’s office did not immediately comment Tuesday on whether she will prosecute the cases against those arrested over the weekend.

Asked about the arrests, DeSantis said state transportation officials have a duty to ensure the “roads remain clean.”

“Hang up a flag,” he said. “Do what you want on your building, your house, however you want to do it. We’re not going to be doing that on our state roadways.”

Blake Simons, an attorney representing the protesters, said the markings didn’t damage the crosswalks. He argues chalk drawings on a crosswalk are protected by the First Amendment.
“The chalk washes away,” he said. “It is not graffiti.”

Maryjane East, 25, Donavon Short, 26, and Zane Aparicio, 39, were arrested and booked by Florida Highway Patrol on Sunday night outside the Pulse memorial. The trio is accused of applying “unauthorized chalk markings to the crosswalk,” according to arrest affidavits.

The Florida Department of Transportation estimated it cost $1,562 to return the crosswalk to its “original state,” according to police records.

Simons called the state’s cost estimate to wash away water-soluble chalk an exaggeration.
Those arrests came after Orestes Sebastian Suarez was arrested Friday night by FHP on the same charge. Suarez was also released shortly after he was booked after the judge found no probable cause that he committed a crime. He was accused of putting chalk on his shoes to make markings on the crosswalk.

The Florida Department of Transportation approved the Pulse crosswalk in 2017. But earlier this summer, it launched a crackdown on street art, painting over the Pulse crosswalk late Aug. 20.

Since then, the state has removed everything from checkered-flag crosswalks near the Daytona International Speedway to swan-patterned crossings near Lake Eola Park in Orlando. It also has ordered other cities, including Delray Beach and Fort Lauderdale, to remove rainbow street art and said colorful bike lanes designed by school children as part of state-sponsored contests need to go too.

The removals came in the wake of a July 1 directive from Sean Duffy, President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, introducing a “safety initiative” seeking consistent markings on roads.

Opponents of colorful crosswalks argue they could pose a safety hazard. But an Orlando Sentinel analysis of city traffic data shows the opposite. City data shows that decorative crosswalks and murals, such as the one near Pulse, helped reduce crashes with pedestrians despite increased foot traffic.

Simons said he views the removal of the Pulse crosswalk an attack on the LGBTQ community, and he is representing the protesters at no charge.

“I am not going to stand for our civil rights to be trampled upon,” he said.

Categories Art, DeSantis, Florida

Florida Federal Judge Orders “Alligator Alcatraz” to Close for Environmental Reasons

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2025 //
7

Trump, Kristi Noem, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have had a good time opening up and celebrating an immigrant detention facility that they call “Alligator Alcatraz.” They boast that immigrants who try to escape will be killed by alligators or snakes in the Everglades.

But the New York Times reported late Thursday that a federal judge ordered that the prison be shut down within the next 60 days because it endangers the environment. Judge Kathleen M. Williams was appointed by President Obama.

A federal judge in Miami gave the state of Florida 60 days to clear out the immigrant detention facility called Alligator Alcatraz, handing environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians a win after they clashed with Gov. Ron DeSantis over the environmental impacts the makeshift site was having in the federally protected Everglades.

The ruling late Thursday from U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, which forbids state officials from moving any other migrants there, deals a blow to what had become a marquee symbol of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.
The environmentalists who sued called it “a huge relief for millions of people who love the Everglades.”

“This brutal detention center was burning a hole in the fabric of life that supports our most iconic wetland and a whole host of endangered species, from majestic Florida panthers to wizened wood storks,” attorney Elise Bennett of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. “The judge’s order came just in time to stop it all from unraveling.”

The state filed a notice of appeal with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals less than an hour after the judge issued her order. DeSantis did not immediately comment.

Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami found that the state and federal governments had violated a federal law that requires an environmental review before any major federal construction project. Judge Williams partly granted a preliminary injunction sought by environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe, whose members live in the area. The detention center is surrounded by protected lands that form part of the sensitive Everglades ecological system.

The detention center presents risks to wetlands and to communities that depend on the Everglades for their water supply, including the Miccosukee, Judge Williams found.

“The project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” she wrote.

Her ruling is preliminary, as the case will continue to be litigated. The state is expected to ask that the ruling be stayed, or kept from taking effect, as it pursues its appeal.

The Trump administration had argued that a review under the National Environmental Policy Act did not apply because while the center houses federal immigration detainees, it is run by the state. At the same time, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis argued that its authority to operate the detention center came from an agreement with the federal government delegating some immigration enforcement powers to Florida.

In her ruling, Judge Williams said federal immigration enforcement is the “key driver” of the detention center’s construction. Because it is subject to federal funding, standards and direction, it is also subject to federal environmental laws, she concluded. 

In making that determination, the judge wrote, the court will “‘adhere to the time-tested adage: If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it’s a duck.’”

Categories Cruelty, DeSantis, Environment, Extremism, Florida, Trump

Florida Judge Strikes Down Part of Book Banning Law

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2025 //
2

Since Governor Ron DeSantis got his “Don’t Say Gay” law in 2023, Florida has led the nation in book banning. That nefarious activity is currently on hold because a federal judge struck down DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Anytime a book banning law gets knocked down, we should celebrate a victory for the freedom to read. Another court, higher-up, may overturn the decision, but for now it’s good news.

Stephany Matt of the Palm Beach Post reported:

A federal judge has struck a blow against Florida’s book bans, ruling that part of a DeSantis-backed law used to sweep classics and modern novels off school shelves is so vague that it’s unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza of the Middle District of Florida focused on the portion of the law that prevents books that “describes sexual conduct” in his Aug. 13 order, saying it’s “unclear what the statute actually prohibits” and to what detail of sexual conduct is prohibited.

The statute (HB 1069) was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023, and it’s been used to remove thousands of books from Florida’s school library shelves.

Mendoza drew concern with classical literature and more modern works such as “The Handmaid’s Tale,” among 23 books removed from Orange County and Volusia County schools.

To defend book removals, DeSantis and state officials have pointed to “government speech,” a legal doctrine that the government has the right to promote its own views without being required to provide equal time or a platform for opposing views.

Mendoza disagreed.

“A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all,” he said. “Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints.”

The judge’s order is a win for Penguin Random House and five other publishers, the Authors Guild, two parents and authors Julia Alvarez, John Green, Angie Thomas, Laurie Halse Anderson and Jodi Picoult. Green is famous for his books “Looking for Alaska” and “Paper Towns,” both of which were mentioned in the order.

Penguin Random House is “elated” that the federal judge upheld First Amendment protections for students, educators, authors and publishers, and that books may only be removed if they lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” when considered, said Dan Novack, vice president and associate general counsel of Penguin Random House.

“This is a sweeping victory for the right to read, and for every student’s freedom to think, learn, and explore ideas,” Novack said in a statement…

The judge’s order does not cast down all of the law, which restricts teachers from using preferred pronouns in schools outside their assigned sex at birth and expedites a process for people to object to reading materials and books in schools..

Categories Censorship, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, Freedom to Read, Literacy

Alligator Alcatraz: Depravity in the Everglades

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2025 //
9

The editorial board of the Sun-Sentinel in Florida expressed shock and disgust at the creation of the detention camp for immigrants now called Alligator Alley. The existence of this hell-hole offended their sense of decency but they were offended even more by the casual glee that Trump, DeSantis, Noem and others expressed about the inhumanity of the detention center. Inmates will die of the scorching heat and humidity. That’s predictable. And these swells in their air-conditioned offices will laugh.

The editorial board wrote:

Unable to resist the political clickbait, President Donald Trump muscled Gov. Ron DeSantis and
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier out of the limelight Tuesday, to celebrate the opening
of a Florida first.

It is an armed camp where thousands of immigrants targeted as undesirables will be confined, possibly without hearings, under the brutal conditions of a swamp in the Everglades in a place most Floridians have never heard of, called Ochopee.

It wasn’t the construction of “Alligator Alcatraz” that brought the president to the camp.

It’s not Florida’s fast-tracking of construction that’s entrancing right-wing media, breathing new life into DeSantis’s national political dreams, and boosting Uthmeier’s reelection profile.

It is the savagery.

The headline-grabbing power of “Alligator Alcatraz” lies entirely in the imagery of brown people getting out of line and being ripped bloody by alligators or suffocated by snakes.

Strip out the celebration of suffering and grotesque inhumanity and it’s just a row of tents in the middle of nowhere.

No respect for the land

This is one more scar on land environmentalists are waging a decades-long battle to save.

It’s just one more insult to the Miccosukee Tribe, which called it home long before Uthmeier embraced it as a stepping-stone to his election campaign.The imagined torment of immigrants at this camp is not a glitch. It’s the main selling point.

This distinguishes it from World War II’s horrific internment of families and orphans of Japanese descent in tar-paper shacks, because they were of the wrong ethnicity at the wrong time. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt called them concentration camps.

But FDR didn’t hawk T-shirts emblazoned with images suggesting gruesome deaths or show AI-generated images of alligators in ICE hats. The Republican Party of Florida did. So did the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The World War II White House did not mark the opening of an internment camp by breathlessly reporting a ravenous cannibal detainee said to be eating himself while in federal custody on a deportation flight. DHS did.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and internment cheerleaders want you to believe that comparisons to other inhumane camps is hysterical hyperbole, as if the cynical marketing of Alligator Alcatraz is not.

The heat and humidity

In a particularly vivid example of his trademark cluelessness, DeSantis rebuffed criticism of inhumane conditions by pointing out the new camp’s showers.

Of course it is inhumane. Of course Trump, DeSantis, Noem and Uthmeier will deny bathing in the specter of savagery, even as Trump’s GOP raised money off it, while sidestepping their role in likely deaths that will have much less soundbite potential.

As Floridians know so well, heat is among the deadliest of weather events. High humidity prevents the body from cooling. Combined, the two are lethal.

The detention camp will place thousands of immigrants in wire cages in a humidity-intense swamp that is all but inaccessible to hospital ambulances, and where the summertime heat index can soar above 100 degrees.

Evacuating in advance of severe storms presents its own dangers, especially as it does not take a hurricane to flood a swamp or the two-lane road running next to it.

On Tuesday, when a typical summer shower dumped less than two inches of rain during the opening tour, water seeped through the edges of buildings, walls shook and water spread across electrical cables, Spectrum News video showed.

On Wednesday, forecasters upped the odds of a major windstorm moving across Florida.

Trump has bigger plans

Environmentalists are suing to stop construction, but Trump has even bigger plans for detention.

It’s wishful thinking to believe South Florida’s immigrant communities within driving distance of Alligator Alcatraz will be exempted, regardless of citizenship status.Trump made clear during Tuesday’s tour that naturalized U.S. citizens — who live in virtually every community in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties — may be next to face detention and deportation.

“I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told reporters. “So maybe that will be the next job.”

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Categories Cruelty, DeSantis, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Immigration, Trump

Florida: Ousted Staff at New College Say DeSantis’ Allies Raided Restricted Funds to Pay President’s Bloated Salary

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2025 //
0

As part of his war on “woke,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis packed the board of New College with likeminded right wingers intent on purging the small college’s progressive character.

Two financial officers who were ousted during the transition revealed that the DeSantis board dipped into restricted gifts to pay the bloated salary of DeSantis-selected President, Richard Corcoran, a politician with no academic credentials. In other words, one of DeSantis’s cronies.

Suncoast Searchlight reported:

Two former top finance officers at the New College Foundation say they were ousted in 2023 after pushing back against college administrators who sought to use donor-restricted funds to cover President Richard Corcoran’s salary and benefits — a move they said would violate the terms of the donations.

Ron McDonough, the foundation’s former director of finance, and Declan Sheehy, former director of philanthropy, said they warned administrators not to misuse a major gift — the largest donation in the school’s history — which they said was not intended to fund administrative salaries.

Both said their contracts were terminated after they raised concerns internally. 

“The college was trying to find the money to pay the president,” McDonough said. “And I kept on going back, saying, ‘We don’t have this unrestricted money.’”

The accounts of their final days on the job, shared publicly for the first time with Suncoast Searchlight, come as former foundation board members and alumni demand greater transparency and accountability from New College amid rising costs and sweeping institutional change.

Since Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a new slate of trustees in early 2023, the small liberal arts college has undergone a dramatic transformation — eliminating its Gender Studies program, reshaping student life, and launching a costly new athletics department. Critics say the administration has also sidelined financial safeguards, raising questions about whether the college is honoring donor intent and maintaining public trust.

Last month, a group of former foundation board members sent Corcoran and New College Foundation executive director Sydney Gruters a demand letter requesting an audit of how restricted donor funds were used and threatening legal action if they do not comply. The letter follows a string of high-profile board resignations and dismissals, including those who held key financial oversight roles.

Their exits, and the college’s move last year to hand Corcoran the unilateral power to fire foundation board members, have deepened fears that independent checks on the foundation’s spending are being systematically dismantled.

A “direct support organization” with close ties to New College, the foundation has never operated independently of the school. But in giving the college president the power to unilaterally remove board members last year, the Board of Trustees further eroded its autonomy. 

“Good governance is not a side item,” said Hazel Bradford, a former foundation board member who sat on the organization’s investments committee and resigned in April, citing concerns about the college’s handling of the foundation. “It’s the beginning and end of any foundation handling other people’s money…”

After the DeSantis-backed overhaul of the Board of Trustees, New College named Corcoran president in early 2023, approving a compensation package that made him the highest-paid president in the college’s history —earning more than $1 million a year in salary and perks.

Because state law limits taxpayer funding for university administrator compensation to $200,000 — an amount that covered only the first four monthsof Corcoran’s salary — New College has turned to its foundation, which manages the school’s endowment and donor funds, to make up the difference.

“Corcoran’s salary is not a one-time thing,” said McDonough. “It’s not sustainable…” 

So the new leadership had to find money to pay Corcoran’s lavish salary, and they turned to the College’s foundation. Most of its funds were restricted by donors for purposes like scholarships. Donor intent is a crucial concept. If a donor give $1 million for scholarships, it should not be used to pay the College president’s salary. Future fundraising will be crippled by violation of that trust.

The older alumni, graduates of the only progressive college in the state, are not likely to make new donations to New College. The new alumni do not yet exist. Maybe Betsy DeVos will bail out New College, which is no longer “new.”

Categories Academic Freedom, DeSantis, Education Reform, Ethics, Florida, Funding, Higher Education
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