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Scott Maxwell: No Good Guys in the DeSantis-Disney Brawl

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2023 //
35

Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel explains the power dynamics behind DeSantis’ fight with Disney. DeSantis just hired four law firms, at the taxpayer expense, of course, to fight Disney’s secret coup to retain control of its property.

Maxwell writes:

If you look at Mickey Mouse’s hands, you’ll notice he doesn’t have a middle finger. But if he did, he most surely flipped it at Ron DeSantis this past week.

Florida’s governor had told the world that he’d taken on Disney and won. But while DeSantis was busy tweeting, Disney operatives were busy working, quietly rewriting legal papers in an attempt to ensure the governor’s tough talk never amounted to anything more.

Basically, Disney was playing 4-D chess while the governor’s legal team was fumbling with a bag of checkers. And by the time Team DeSantis figured out what had happened Wednesday, its members could do little more than fume and pout.

DeSantis is so used to picking on easy targets — drag queens and transgender teenagers — that he wasn’t prepared to do battle with someone with the power to fight back.

It’s easy for DeSantis critics to laugh and scoff. Donald Trump certainly did, mocking his former protégé for getting bested by a cartoon mouse.

But the reality is that this whole situation stinks.

Ron DeSantis and GOP lawmakers are trying to use bully power and petty politics to punish a private company for expressing opinions they dislike — in this case, Disney’s opinion that LGBTQ families should be treated like human beings….

Still, Disney doesn’t deserve to run its own government. Many of us have argued as much for years. Unfortunately, lawmakers in this state have been happy to do Disney special favors for decades — as long as Disney cut them checks.

Just two years ago, DeSantis signed a law exempting Disney from a crackdown on social media companies after the company gave his political committee $50,000.

The ludicrous bill, which was invalidated by a federal judge who noted the special-interest favoritism, included a carve-out that exempted any company that “owns and operates a theme park.” DeSantis signed the bill less than two months after cashing Disney’s check and after records show his staffers swapped emails about the language Disney lobbyists wanted in the law.

DeSantis clearly did a favor for a corporate donor, blowing a castle-sized hole in the tough-on-corporations narrative he tries to peddle. In fact, a big part of why corporate America likes DeSantis is that they know he plays ball….

DeSantis had vowed to make Disney “follow the same laws every other company follows in the state of Florida.” I actually like that plan. That’s how it should’ve been all along. But that’s not what he did.

Instead, he put a group of hand-picked political appointees in charge of the private company. No other company in America works like that. DeSantis didn’t put Disney on the same footing as everyone else. He tried to put Disney under his own personal thumb. And Disney seems to have found a way to at least temporarily thwart him.

If these guys actually had a desire to do the right thing — before Disney cut them off financially — they wouldn’t have tried to twice ram through poorly thought-out laws. They would’ve asked a team of smart government-law experts to devise a way to sunset Disney’s special status in a logical, legal matter.

But logic has taken a beating in Tallahassee over the last two years as book-banning, pronoun-legislating and drag-queen-bashing have become the rage.

I don’t begrudge anyone who laughed at DeSantis last week for getting out-brained by a mouse. It was cringe-inducingly amusing to watch his campaign team stage a meltdown on Twitter, claiming that the governor’s clear loss was really a big win because (just you wait) the governor is always thinking “10 steps ahead….”

So sure, laugh at DeSantis. But I’m still not rooting for Disney.

While the company has done some great philanthropic things in this community, it has also used money, power and even free park tickets to warp public policy in this state for decades. Everything from secret text messages with county commissioners to try to deny sick time for local workers to back-channel messaging with the governor’s staff to request special favors.

I’m not cheering for the powerful corporation or the pandering politicians. I’m rooting for good government that doesn’t cater to special interests — the one thing neither side seems to want.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories DeSantis, Florida

DeSantis Vows to Punish Disney

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2023 //
29

Speaking at Hillsdale College, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis vowed to take vengeance on the Disney Corporation for pulling a fast one. Disney is the biggest employer in the state. The feud began when Disney objected to DeSantis’s anti-gay legislation, at the urging of its employees. DeSantis then got the legislature to dissolve Disney’s special self-governing district, the Reedy Creek district, and place Disney World under the control of a board appointed by DeSantis. But before the legislation passed, Disney’s Reedy Creek board made a deal to extend its existence for decades to come. DeSantis’ board was left with no powers.

DeSantis is an authoritarian who never admits defeat. So he must fight the Disney Corporation.

This is a warning to corporate America: Watch out for this guy. He will try to control you or destroy you.

Escalating an already hot feud, Gov. Ron DeSantis says he plans to void the Reedy Creek deal with Disney that stripped the new board of its power and consider imposing new hotel taxes and tolls on Disney World.

“Come hell or high water, we’re going to make sure that policy of Florida carries the day,” DeSantis said in a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan on Thursday night. “And so they can keep trying to do things. But ultimately we’re going to win on every single issue involving Disney, I can tell you that.”

In a question-and-answer session at the conservative Michigan college, DeSantis called the entertainment giant and largest single-site employer in the state a “joke.”


Disney is “acting like somehow that they that they pulled one over on the state,” DeSantis said.

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Fascism, Florida

Ryan Cooper: What’s Behind Republicans’ Anti-Woke Hysteria?

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2023 //
14

Ryan Cooper writes in The American Prospect that the anti-woke frenzy among Republicans is a purposeful smokescreen. While their followers rant and rave about WOKE targets, like books and drag queens, the Republican legislators will continue to pass legislation to protect the interests of the rich.

Cooper writes:

It’s long been a truism among liberal political writers that a great deal of conservative culture-war politics is misdirection that disguises the GOP’s real policy agenda. By far the most consistent laws the Republican Party has produced in office since the 1980s are tax cuts for the rich and deregulation. This type of thing is unpopular, even among Republican voters, and so a regular supply of shiny objects is needed to distract them.null

That is of course true of the latest conservative hate frenzy: the crusade against “wokeness,” which the right increasingly uses as a catchall slur for everything they dislike—diversity, reproductive rights, accurate history, climate policy, the dissolution of a failed bank, and so on. Meanwhile, beneath the din, typical pro-rich policy is quietly written up.

Yet not only is the anti-woke frenzy covering up the oligarchic economics of the GOP, it is also directly profiting the allies of Republican politicians. Helping corporate CEOs and anti-woke grifters: Like the gif says, why not both?

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies are rushing through a law that would force banks not to use “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) criteria in their investing decisions. This is a version of a resolution that Republicans passed through Congress recently, leading to what’s expected to be President Biden’s first veto. As Jason Garcia writes at Popular Information, the Florida law would forbid any bank with accounts from state government from making banking or investment decisions based on a company’s “business sector,” or based on “support of the state or Federal Government in combatting illegal immigration.”

This idea is wildly impractical, as ESG or “business sector” questions must include many factors that directly affect the profits of an investment—like when Norfolk Southern spilled a huge amount of vinyl chloride in East Palestine, Ohio. (Would they get civil rights protections because of that in Florida?) Taken literally, DeSantis’s law would outlaw virtually half of all banking.

Of course, it is not meant literally. The subtext is that Florida banks better start lending again to DeSantis’s favorite immigrant detention camp company, or else. A private prison firm called GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, got cut off from mainstream banking in 2019, thanks to protests over its appalling treatment of detainees. The company has been one of DeSantis’s biggest campaign contributorssince 2018, as well as of Florida Republicans, and it stopped paying dividends in 2022. That is likely to weigh on company stock, unless those “woke” rules turn around and GEO Group can get its financing back.

In short, DeSantis would force Wall Street to once again fund his political cronies, and thence his own political campaigns.

Or in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott recently announced that the state government is taking control of the 200,000-strong Houston school district, supposedly because one of its 50 high schools has struggled academically. (The district as a whole was recently given a “B” by the state education agency.) It’s not a coincidence that, as Forrest Wilder writes at Texas Monthly, Abbott has recently been touring overtly right-wing private religious schools touting the benefits of his school voucher plan. These luxurious schools typically cost over $10,000 per year in tuition. The wealthy, ultra-right-wing families that use them—and the highly paid right-wing administrators and teachers who run them—would benefit from a voucher that might cover about half the cost, while undermining public schools. All that is needed to get the job done is to delete a provision in the Texas constitution separating church and state, which Texas Republicans have proposed, helped along by the fearmongering that woke schools are ruining children’s lives, no doubt.

Not only is the anti-woke frenzy covering up the oligarchic economics of the GOP, it is also directly profiting the allies of Republican politicians.

Perhaps most telling of all is the situation in Hungary, increasingly considered as an anti-woke utopia by American conservatives. CPAC invited Prime Minister Viktor Orban to their conference last year, and prominent conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Rod Dreher make regular pilgrimages.

Hungary is a quasi-dictatorship, and Orban has used his power to turn the country into a colony of international capital. When he took power in 2010, he made Hungary extremely attractive to foreign investors by slashing taxes on the rich and corporations while raising them on the working class. Together with Hungary’s low wages, this set the stage for a decade-long economic boom, concurrent with an explosion in domestic inequality. Orban’s latest plan is to entice a Chinese company into building the largest battery factory in Europe, though the idea is reportedly not popular among locals, who correctly suspect the company is not going to take proper precautions against pollution, and that workers and the local economy will see very little of the benefits.

Conservative politics is about creating, reinforcing, and preserving hierarchy. Oligarchic economics is only natural. Wedge issues that pit the lower classes against one another to cloak this hierarchy are also par for the course. If and when Republicans take national power again, it’ll be one more screaming tantrum after the next, while they rob the American people blind in the background.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Deregulation, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Hoax, Lies, Republicans

Florida Vouchers: A Multi-Billion-Dollar Hole in the Budget

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2023 //
7

The Florida legislature passed a universal voucher plan, meaning that the state will subsidize the tuition of every student, no matter their family income, Rich or poor. The state will hand out subsidies to rich families whose children go to elite private schools. All money deducted from public schools. Short-sighted and stupid, a giveaway to families who can afford private schools.

Currently, there are more than 400,000 students enrolled in private schools. About 80,000 may already have a voucher. Now, even those attending an exclusive school will be subsidized by the state. Homeschoolers will also be subsidized by the state, at least 20,000 in the fumigation year.

Most of the schools that take vouchers are religious and most are not accredited.

Likely new cost: 320,000 students already enrolled in private schools without a voucher plus 20,000 homeschooled kids x $7,800=$2.65 billion. And that’s without a single student now in public school asking for a voucher. A realistic estimate for the annual cost of Florida’s universal voucher would be at least $3 billion a year.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priotities notes that the Florida voucher funding is designed to reduce the funding of public schools, which currently enroll about 80-85% of the state’s children:

While voucher programs are often funded as line-item appropriations in state budgets or through private donations (which over time reduces the revenues available for education and other state priorities), this Florida voucher is actually designed to take money away from the state K-12 funding formula designated for public school districts.

Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel says that Florida’s universal voucher program is likely to blow a billion-dollar hole in the state budget. As I pointed out above, $1 billion is a low estimate. That hole in the budget will be closer to $3-4 billion, when you include the students whose parents can already afford to pay tuition.

He writes:

Florida lawmakers are about to take the biggest educational gamble in American history — financed with your tax dollars.

They want to offer every child in Florida the chance to use publicly funded vouchers at private schools that have virtually no regulation and offer no guarantee that the students will get educated.

Florida’s existing network of voucher schools is so infamously unchecked that the Orlando Sentinel has found schools employing teachers that don’t have high-school diplomas themselves. Some refuse to serve children with disabilities or gay parents. Others were such financial wrecks that they shut down in the middle of the school year, stranding students.

Flaw #1:

Voucher schools in Florida are unregulated. They can hire teachers who are not certified. They can hire teachers who never finished college. Voucher schools do not take state tests. They need not disclose their graduation rate or their curriculum. They are not overseen by state officials. Some voucher schools ignore safety codes, because they are not required to comply with them. The Orlando Sentinel conducted an investigation called “Schools Without Rules,” demonstrating that voucher schools take tax money without any oversight, transparency or accountability.

Flaw #2:

Voucher schools operate in secrecy. They are not required to report anything to the state.Not test scores, graduation rates, SAT scores, or anything else. Florida is operating on the principle of “Trust But Don’t Verify.” Public schools are held to tight accountability requirements. Voucher schools, none at all. If accountability is good for public schools, why is it unnecessary for voucher schools?

Flaw #3:

Voucher schools can discriminate against any group. Unlike public schools, voucher schools can discriminate on any grounds. They don’t have to accept students with disabilities, gay students, students who don’t speak English, or students from a religion they don’t like.

Flaw #4:

Legislators think that choice is the only accountability needed. If a parent is unhappy, make a different choice. The only choice that parents do not have is to stop paying their tax dollars to fund this sector.

There is another grievous flaw:

The Florida voucher program reduces funding for the schools that the overwhelming majority of students attend. Why does this make sense?

Maxwell says there are good voucher schools, and they should have no objection to accountability, transparency, and oversight. Maxwell recommends the following fixes for the state voucher program.

All voucher-eligible schools should be required to:

  1. Publish graduation rates and nationally accepted test scores.
  2. Hire teachers who are certified or at least have a college degree.
  3. Disclose all the curriculum being taught.
  4. Ban discrimination. (If discrimination is a key tenet of a religious organization’s belief system, they should fund that discrimination with their own money. Any group that receives public dollars should serve all the public.)

Maxwell does not address the two glaring defects of the voucher program:

1. 75-80% of the students who take vouchers already attend private schools. Why is it in the interest of Florida to pay their tuition?

2. About 60% of the students who switch from a public school to a voucher school will drop out within two years. The vast majority of voucher studies conclude that students lose ground academically when they take a voucher. Shouldn’t parents be warned of the risk that they are taking by accepting a voucher?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Deregulation, DeSantis, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Funding, Privatization, Republicans, Special Education, Vouchers

Florida Plans to Eliminate Tenure in Higher Education

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2023 //
16

Florida is the state where freedom goes to die. The state university system intends to eliminate tenure and replace it with a five-year evaluation system. Theoretically, the review won’t include political views, but all professors will be expected to comply with state laws. Anyone who teaches courses about race, racism, gay studies, or inequality is unlikely to get a favorable evaluation because those subjects are banned by state law. Anyone who teaches or defends critical race theory is likely to be ousted.

Florida’s state university system is making major changes to long-time tenure protections, meaning that established professors would have to undergo a review every five years to determine the faculty members’ “productivity.”

However, Florida-based professors and other advocates say that the new rule, approved by the Florida Board of Governors Wednesday, could hurt academic freedom and impact a faculty members’ livelihood.

The issue of Florida’s five-year post-tenure evaluations, among other changes to the state’s universities, is getting nationwide criticism from multiple organizations, including American Association of University Professors, the American Psychological Association, Modern Language Association, and American Historical Association and a dozen others.

Faculty in other states are even voicing their opposition to Florida’s new higher education policies, such as the University of Rhode Island Faculty Senate and the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York.

“Over the past two years, Florida elected officials have attacked the independence and integrity of the state’s public higher education institutions…introducing a requirement for five-year post-tenure reviews, they have undermined tenure and academic freedom,” the Professional Staff Congress said in a written statement.

The American Association of University Professors explains that tenure serves as a “safeguard” for a professor’s academic freedom.

“A tenured appointment is an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation,” the AAUP explains on its website.

It continues: “When faculty members can lose their positions because of their speech, publications, or research findings, they cannot properly fulfill their core responsibilities to advance and transmit knowledge.”

But new rules adopted Wednesday by the Florida Board of Governors tasks each university board of trustees to adopt policies that evaluate tenured professors on a handful of unified goals from a statewide standpoint.

The rule adoption is due to a new law from the 2022 legislative session, which was pushed by then-Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., who added in a last-minute amendment calling for the 5-year tenure review. Then Sen. Ray Rodrigues was a co-sponsor. Diaz is now the Florida Education Commissioner. Rodrigues is the Chancellor of the university system.

Under this new rule, faculty are to be evaluated on “productivity,” “meeting the responsibilities and expectations associated with assigned duties,” and “compliance with state laws, Board of Governors’ regulations, and university regulations and policies.”

The chief academic officer of the university, often referred to as the ‘provost,’ would make the final call on a professor’s performance, according to the rule.

But the Florida higher education system has experienced an overhaul by the DeSantis administration, facing a mountain of changes that cater to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ conservative views regarding a variety of concerns, including tenure protections. That’s why some Florida professors are concerned that the state is becoming a hostile environment for current and prospective faculty.

The rule says that a professor evaluation “shall not consider or otherwise discriminate” based on a professor’s “political or ideological viewpoints,” but some are skeptical on whether that provision will be adhered to.

“The way that many of our faculty are looking at it is that this is intentionally designed from the ground up to allow bad actors to cull faculty from departments with whom they personally disagree or who have politics that are inconvenient to the institution,” Andrew Gothard, president of United Faculty of Florida, told the Phoenix.

“Or, as we’ve seen with the narrative that’s been coming out of Tallahassee, who have politics that disagree with those of the governor,” he added.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Higher Education

Disney CEO Plans $17 Billion Expansion, Knocks DeSantis

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2023 //
14

Governor Ron DeSantis should be careful whom he picks on. Not only did Disney outsmart DeSantis and retain control of DisneyWorkd, but its CEO announced at a shareholder meeting in California that Disney plans to grow in Florida. He also rapped DeSantis for trying to punish Disney for exercising its constitutional right to free speech.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

The Walt Disney Co. plans to invest $17 billion in Walt Disney World over the next 10 years and create 13,000 new jobs, CEO Bob Iger said Monday, as he accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of being vindictive over Disney’s response to the so-called “don’t say gay” law last year….

Disney World will host 50 million visitors this year, and its planned expansion will bring even more guests and employees to the state in the years to come, along with generating more taxes, Iger said.

“Our point on this is that any action that thwarts those efforts, simply to retaliate for a position the company took, sounds not just anti-business, but it sounds anti-Florida, and I’ll just leave it at that,” he said….

During the company’s annual meeting, Iger also said Disney loves Florida and has heavily invested in the state over the past 50 years in its expansion of the Disney World resort, as the state’s largest taxpayer and through its charitable actions.

The state’s relationship with Florida has “kind of been a two-way street,” Iger said.

But that changed last year when former CEO Bob Chapek spoke out against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation, which restricts discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in early-grade classrooms. That drew DeSantis’ ire and led to a law dissolving of the company’s special land use, utilities and public service district, Reedy Creek.

“And while the company may have not handled the position that it took very well, a company has a right to freedom of speech just like individuals do,” Iger said.

He said DeSantis dissolved Reedy Creek “in effect to seek to punish a company for its exercise of a constitutional right.”

“And that just seems really wrong to me, against any company or individual but particularly against the company that means so much to the state that you live in,” he added.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, DeSantis, Extremism, Failure, Florida, Freedom of Speech

Hillsdale College Cuts Ties to Florida Charter School That Fired Principal After Showing of Michelango’s “David”

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2023 //
37

Conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan has a chain of charter schools that use its “classical” curriculum. One of its affiliate schools, the Tallahassee Classical Charter School, made headlines last week when the principal was fired after a teacher showed the statue of Michelangelo’s “David” to an art class.

Apparently Hillsdale was appalled, it severed its connection to the school. Even super-conservative Hillsdale was mortified by the prudery of DeSantisland.

A Michigan college has ended its relationship with the Florida charter school whose principal was pressured to resign after parents complained that her Renaissance art syllabus, which included a picture of Michelangelo’s David, was inappropriate for sixth-graders.

The Tallahassee Classical School, which was licensed to use Hillsdale College’s classical education curriculum, is no longer affiliated with the small, Christian college, Hillsdale spokesperson Emily Stack Davis said in a statement to MLive.com.

“This drama around teaching Michelangelo’s David sculpture, one of the most important works of art in existence, has become a distraction from, and a parody of, the actual aims of classical education,” Davis said. “Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s Davidand other works of art that depict the human form.”

The chair of the board of the school explained that children should see only parts of the statue, depending on their age.

“Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age,” said Bishop.

“We’re going to figure out when that is,” he added. “And you don’t have to show the whole statue! Maybe to kindergartners we only show the head. You can appreciate that. You can show the hands, the arms, the muscles, the beautiful work Michelangelo did in marble, without showing the whole thing.”

Yahoos are gonna yahoo.

Categories Art, Arts Education, Censorship, Charter Schools, DeSantis, Florida

Join a Protest Against Ron DeSantis’ Attacks on Education!

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
21

MEDIA ADVISORY:

Tomorrow, on Saturday, parents and community members from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) and HEAL Together, alongside organizations from Florida and Pennslyvania, will hold a press conference opposing Governor Ron DeSantis’ harmful policies attacking our children’s freedom to learn. The press conference will take place opposite the site of DeSantis’ keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference. Florida advocates will speak at the press conference to warn that DeSantis’ policies are bringing chaos to Florida families.

The full media advisory is below. Feel free to reach out to the media contact: Moira Kaleida | 412-760-0030 | moira@reclaimourschools.org



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 31, 2023


**MEDIA ADVISORY**PARENTS, COMMUNITY FROM PA & FL STAND UP AGAINST DESANTIS ATTACKS ON EDUCATION AND OUR COMMUNITIES— PRESS CONFERENCE AND ACTION


Harrisburg, PA – Saturday, April 1, 2023, parents and community members from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) and HEAL Together, alongside Moms Rising, Red Wine & Blue, 412 Justice and Common Purpose (West Palm Beach, FL), and parents and community members from Florida to Pennsylvania will hold a press conference opposing Governor DeSantis’ harmful policies attacking our children’s freedom to learn.

The press conference will take place opposite the site of DeSantis’ keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference.

Concerned parents and community members will speak in response to the attacks on public education, including the passage of classroom censorship laws, the voucher bill which is a $5 billion giveaway to rich families, and the ban on life-saving education and healthcare for LGBTQIA+ youth.

Florida advocates will speak at the press conference to warn that these policies are bringing chaos to Florida families.


Education justice groups will be holding rallies also on April 1 in Miami, Orlando, Pinellas County and other sites throughout Florida to protest DeSantis’ anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ policies that have had a devastating impact on Florida’s children.

Pennsylvanians have voted against these policies in the past, and through solidarity with Floridians, Pennsylvanians have an opportunity to oppose DeSantis’ divisive tactics in order to ensure that all children have the freedom to learn and build a better future.

WHAT: Press conference with Pennsylvanians and Floridians to oppose Governor Ron DeSantis’ harmful policies attacking our children, our schools and our educational freedom after DeSantis’ keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference.


WHEN: April 1, 2023. Press Conference begins at 1 PM EST.


WHERE: In front of Harrisburg Academy (10 Erford Rd, Wormleysburg, PA 17043). The press conference location is across the street from Penn Harris Hotel (1150 Camp Hill Bypass, Camp Hill, PA 17011) where the Pennsylvania Leadership conference takes place.


WHO: Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS), with HEAL Together, Moms Rising, Red Wine & Blue, Common Purpose, 412 Justice, and parents, educators, and community members.


For on-site interviews, contact: Moira Kaleida | 412-760-0030 | moira@reclaimourschools.org

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The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) is a coalition of parent, youth, community and labor organizations fighting to reclaim the promise of public education as our nation’s gateway to a strong democracy and racial and economic justice. AROS is uniting parents, youth, teachers and unions to drive the transformation of public education, shift the public debate and build a national movement for equity and opportunity for all.

HEAL (Honest Education Action & Leadership) Together is building a movement of students, educators, and parents in school districts across the United States who believe that an honest, accurate and fully funded public education is the foundation for a just, multiracial democracy.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Gender, Privatization, Racism, Vouchers

Mickey Mouse Humiliates Ron DeSantis

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2023 //
40

When the Disney Corporation criticized Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the Governor struck back by taking control of Disney’s special district and creating a board (appointed by him) to oversee Disney. The board consisted of rightwing extremists and DeSantis campaign donors. DeSantis boasted about his ability to punish and subjugate the state’s largest employer and its economic engine. It was easy to imagine the extremist DeSantis board censoring Disney attractions and shows to make sure nothing happened that was “woke.”

But wait!

While DeSantis was boasting, the Magic Kingdom was making a deal to elude his grasp.

CNN reported here on Disney’s quiet escape from DeSantis’ clutches:

(CNN)The battle between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may not be over yet.

The new board handpicked by the Republican governor to oversee Disney’s special taxing district said Wednesday it is considering legal action over a multi-decade agreement reached between the entertainment giant and the outgoing board in the days before the state’s hostile takeover last month.

Under the agreement — quietly approved on February 8 as Florida lawmakers met in special session to hand DeSantis control of the Reedy Creek Improvement District — Disney would maintain control over much of its vast footprint in Central Florida for 30 years and, in some cases, the board can’t take significant action without first getting approval from the company.

“This essentially makes Disney the government,” board member Ron Peri said during Wednesday’s meeting, according to video posted by an Orlando television station. “This board loses, for practical purposes, the majority of its ability to do anything beyond maintaining the roads and maintaining basic infrastructure.”

The episode is the latest twist in a yearlong saga between Disney and DeSantis, who has battled the company as he tries to tally conservative victories ahead of a likely bid for the 2024 GOP nomination.

The board on Wednesday retained “multiple financial and legal firms to conduct audits and investigate Disney’s past behavior,” DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske said. According to meeting documents, the board was entering into agreements with four firms to provide counsel on the matter.

“The Executive Office of the Governor is aware of Disney’s last-ditch efforts to execute contracts just before ratifying the new law that transfers rights and authorities from the former Reedy Creek Improvement District to Disney,” Fenske said. “An initial review suggests these agreements may have significant legal infirmities that would render the contracts void as a matter of law.”

In a statement to CNN, Disney stood by its actions.

“All agreements signed between Disney and the District were appropriate, and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” the company said. Documents for the February 8 meeting show it was noticed in the Orlando Sentinel as required by law.

Multiple board members did not immediately respond to request for comment. The Sentinel first reported on Wednesday’s vote to hire legal counsel.

According to a statement Wednesday night from the district’s acting counsel and its newly obtained legal counsel, the agreement gave Disney development rights throughout the district and “not just on Disney’s property,” requires the district to borrow and spend on projects that benefit the company, and gives Disney veto authority over any public project in the district.

“The lack of consideration, the delegation of legislative authority to a private corporation, restriction of the Board’s ability to make legislative decisions, and giving away public rights without compensation for a private purpose, among other issues, warrant the new Board’s actions and direction to evaluate these overreaching documents and determine how best the new Board can protect the public’s interest in compliance with Florida Law,” the statement from Fishback Dominick LLP, Cooper & Kirk PLLC, Lawson Huck Gonzalez PLLC, Waugh Grant PLLC and Nardella & Nardella PLLC said.

The spat between Disney and the governor stems from the company’s opposition to a Florida law that prohibits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity through third grade and only in an “age appropriate” manner in older grades. In March of last year, as outrage against the legislation spread nationwide, Disney released a statement vowing to help get the law repealed or struck down by the courts.

DeSantis and Florida GOP lawmakers retaliated by eliminating the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the special taxing authority that effectively gave Disney control of the land in and around its sprawling Orlando-area theme parks. But Republicans in control of the state legislature changed course this year and voted instead to fire the board overseeing the district and gave DeSantis power to name all five replacements. It also renamed Reedy Creek as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District and eliminated some of its powers.

DeSantis stacked the board with political allies, including Tampa lawyer Martin Garcia, a prominent GOP donor; Bridget Ziegler, the wife of the new chairman of the Republican Party of Florida; and Peri, a former pastor who once suggested tap water could be making people gay.

The controversy is central to DeSantis’ political narrative of a leader who is unafraid to battle corporate giants, even one as iconic and vital to Florida as Disney. It is a saga that is featured prominently in his new book and one he often shares at events across the country as he lays the groundwork for a likely national campaign.

At last month’s signing ceremony for the bill that gave him control of Reedy Creek’s board, DeSantis declared, “The corporate kingdom finally comes to an end.”

“There’s a new sheriff in town,” he added.

However, it may be a while before the new power structure has control, if Disney gets its way. One agreement signed by the outgoing board — which restricts the new board from using any of Disney’s “fanciful characters” — is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England,” according to a copy of the deal included in the February 8 meeting packet.

“President Trump wrote ‘Art of the Deal’ and brokered Middle East peace,” said Taylor Budowich, spokesman for the Trump-aligned Make America Great Again PAC. “Ron DeSantis just got out-negotiated by Mickey Mouse.”

The stealth move by Disney prompted allies of DeSantis’ chief political rival, former President Donald Trump, to suggest the governor had been out-maneuvered.

DeSantis’ political operation insisted the governor’s appointees were holding Disney accountable.

“Governor DeSantis’ new board would not, and will not, allow Disney to give THEMSELVES unprecedented power over land (some of which isn’t even theirs!) for 30+ years,” Christina Pushaw, of DeSantis’ rapid response team, wrote on Twitter.

Sorry, Christina, DeSantis should stick to bullying minorities and pick on someone his own size. The Mouse just beat the Mouth.

The BBC scrutinized the new Disney agreement and found that it includes a “royal clause.”

The declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England”, according to the document.

Such so-called royal lives clauses have been inserted into legal documentation since the late 17th Century, and they are still found in some contracts in the UK, though rarely in the US.

The 151-page Florida agreement also states that no “fanciful characters” owned by Disney, including Mickey Mouse, can be used by the board. The use of the name Disney is also banned.

Categories Accountability, Creativity, DeSantis, Disruption, Economy, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Gender

USA Today: Most Americans Think It’s Good to Be WOKE

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2023 //
16

Take that, DeSatanis!

USA Today conducted a poll and found that most Americans think it’s good to be “woke.”

Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on “woke,” but a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word as a positive attribute, not a negative one.

Fifty-six percent of those surveyed say the term means “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.” That includes not only three-fourths of Democrats but also more than a third of Republicans.

Overall, 39% say instead that the word reflects what has become the GOP political definition, “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.” That’s the view of 56% of Republicans.

So, do you want to be informed and aware?

Or do you prefer to be uninformed and asleep?

By the way, I got an email inviting me to attend a speech by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island. That means he is running. He will talk about “the Florida Vision.” I assume that means banning books, vetting Black history, banning art, crushing academic freedom, silencing all dissent.

I prefer American values, the ones in our Constitution.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Gender, Privatization, Racism
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