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Florida: Professors File Federal Lawsuit Against DeSantis’s Anti-DEI Law

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2025 //
2

A group of professors in Florida filed a federal lawsuit against the 2023 state law banning teaching about diversity, equity, and inclusion, claiming that it restricts freedom of speech.

The law was enacted as part of Governor Ron DeSantis’s war on “woke,” meaning any teaching about or practice related to DEI.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

TALLAHASSEE — A group of Florida university professors on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a 2023 state law and related regulations that prevent colleges from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, saying the restrictions are “punishing educators and students for expressing differing and disfavored viewpoints.”


The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP on behalf of six professors, alleges that the restrictions violate educators’ and students’ speech rights and is chilling expression in public universities. It targets the 2023 law (SB 266) and rules passed last year by the state university system’s Board of Governors.


“Continuing its effort to police the marketplace of ideas, the Florida Legislature again passed vague, viewpoint-discriminatory legislation that broadly restricts academic freedom and imposes the state’s favored viewpoints on public higher education, punishing educators and students for expressing differing and disfavored viewpoints,” the lawsuit said.


The restrictions ban funding for programs or campus activities that advocate for diversity, equity, or inclusion or that engage in “political or social activism.”

One of the rules defines DEI as “any program, campus activity, or policy that classifies individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation and promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification.” Colleges and universities risk losing funding if they violate the restrictions.
The lawsuit alleged that the regulations’ definitions are “ambiguous, inconsistent, and far too broad to provide any real guidance other than indicating the Legislature’s and the BOG’s (Board of Governors’) intent to disfavor certain speech.”


The restrictions “have left instructors and students fearful for the future of not only education, but also free thought and democracy in Florida,” the professors’ lawyers wrote.
The rules have “stripped hundreds of university courses” from being designated as “general education” courses, according to the lawsuit. Universities also have denied scholarship and research money to faculty and students who have received it in the past.

Categories Democracy, DeSantis, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Resistance

If Trump Chooses DeSantis to Replace Hegseth…

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2024 //
23

The Miami Herald noted that Trump is considering dropping Pete Hegseth as his nominee for Secretary of Defense and selecting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis instead. So it published a story reviewing DeSantis’s statements about how he would deploy the military. Read and be informed.

The Miami Herald reports:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly vowed during his presidential campaign to send troops to the U.S. southern border, authorize lethal force against migrants attempting to cross between ports of entry, and even consider firing missiles into Mexico — an extraordinary use of U.S. military power that has since been endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump. Now, DeSantis may have a chance to fulfill that promise, among other controversial proposals, should Trump ask him to lead the Pentagon. The Republican governor is said to be in discussions with Trump and his transition team about replacing Pete Hegseth, a Fox News television personality plagued by sex and drinking scandals, as his nominee for defense secretary….

At one of the GOP primary debates, DeSantis said he would declare a national emergency and send troops to the southern border to deploy lethal force against drug cartels attempting to smuggle drugs into the country. Throughout the campaign, DeSantis was repeatedly pressed to explain how the military would determine whether individuals crossing the border had any connection to the drug trade. “I am gonna declare a national emergency, I’m not gonna send troops to Ukraine but I am gonna send them to our southern border,” he said. “When these drug pushers are bringing fentanyl across the border, that’s gonna be the last thing they do. We’re gonna use force and we’re gonna leave them stone-cold dead….”

In another exchange during the primary, DeSantis told CBS that he would consider all available military options — including using force in Mexico itself — to combat the illegal drug trade. “The tactics can be debated,” he said, asked whether he would fire missiles into Mexico. “That would be dependent on the situation.” DeSantis has also spent millions of dollars in recent years supporting Texas in deterring migrants from entering the country through state-led border security initiatives. Florida aided in some of Texas’ efforts that have come under scrutiny, including reports that officers were ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande.

DOMESTIC DEPLOYMENTS

DeSantis, as governor, has already demonstrated a willingness to deploy state troops under his control for unconventional purposes, often unrelated to the immediate needs of the state. He sent members of the Florida State Guard to aid Texas’ state efforts to police the border — despite questions over their coordination with federal border patrol — and, in 2020, sent 500 Florida National Guardsmen to Washington in response to protests following the death of George Floyd….

RECRUITMENT CHALLENGES

DeSantis also promised to purge the military of “woke” policies, such as highlighting diversity, equity and inclusion and allowing transgender personnel to serve as their preferred sex, claiming the policies were undermining military effectiveness and suppressing recruitment. “It is time to rip the woke out of the military and return it to its core mission,” DeSantis said during the campaign. “We must restore a sense of confidence, conviction, and patriotic duty to our institutions — and that begins with our military….”

On the campaign trail, DeSantis also frequently questioned the value of sending financial and military support to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia. He opposed its membership bid to NATO and questioned the mission of NATO itself during the primary, calling on the transatlantic alliance to focus on the growing threat from China.

A 2021 study commissioned by the Pentagon on recruitment strategies found that “wokeness” did not register among the top 10 reasons why Americans were enlisting at record low numbers.

“Our research shows that the top barriers to service are concerns about death or injury, PTSD, emotional issues, and leaving friends and family — not political issues,” a Pentagon official told McClatchy last year. “Concerns about vaccines and ‘wokeness’ are among the least to be raised as reasons not to join the military….”

On the campaign trail, DeSantis also frequently questioned the value of sending financial and military support to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia. He opposed its membership bid to NATO and questioned the mission of NATO itself during the primary, calling on the transatlantic alliance to focus on the growing threat from China.

“I think NATO was fine for the Cold War. It made sense,” he said. “Now we’re in a situation where a lot of those countries aren’t doing their fair share in terms of their defenses, and yet we’re supposed to provide blanket security for that, where our interests may diverge around the world.”

At one point, DeSantis called the war between Ukraine and Russia a “territorial dispute.” He quickly changed his message after facing criticism and said that Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine and Putin was a “war criminal.”

Ukraine, DeSantis added, has a “right to that territory.”

“If I could snap my fingers, I’d give it back to Ukraine 100%,” DeSantis told the New York Post’s Piers Morgan in March 2023. “But the reality is what is America’s involvement in terms of escalating with more weapons, and certainly ground troops I think would be a mistake. So, that was the point I was trying to make, but Russia was wrong to invade. They were wrong to take Crimea.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article296548929.html#storylink=cpy

Categories DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Florida, Trump

Florida: “A Man Is Nothing Without His Conscience”

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2024 //
4

The DeSantis regime threatened to prosecute television stations that aired ads supporting Amendment 4, the one that repeals the state ban on abortion. The order was blocked by the courts. When the lawyer for the state Department of Health was directed to sign a second letter reiterating the threat, he resigned.

The Miami Herald reported:

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ top deputies directed a Florida Health Department lawyer to threaten Florida television stations with criminal prosecution for running political advertisements that support enshrining abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, according to new court records.

Florida Department of Health General Counsel John Wilson said he was given pre-written letters from one of DeSantis’ lawyers on Oct. 3 and told to send them under his own name, he wrote in a sworn affidavit Monday.

Although he had never participated in any discussions about the letters, Wilson sent them anyway, he wrote, setting off a firestorm that led to a federal judge last week granting a temporary restraining order against the state.

Wilson abruptly quit on Oct. 10, writing in his resignation letter that “A man is nothing without his conscience.” The letter, first reported by the Herald/Times, did not explicitly say he was resigning over the controversy.

But in his affidavit, Wilson said the decision was made to avoid sending out more letters. “I resigned from my position as general counsel in lieu of complying with directives from [DeSantis General Counsel Ryan] Newman and [Deputy General Counsel Jed] Doty to send out further correspondence to media outlets,” he wrote.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article294143314.html#storylink=cpy

Categories DeSantis, Elections, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Health

Melting Glaciers Produce Long-Lost Corpses: Climate Change Is Real

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2024 //
7

Some Republican leaders, including Trump, believe that climate change is a hoax. The Trump administration banned the use of the term by government agencies. Florida recently declared it would not adopt science textbooks that explain climate change. It’s not real.

Really? Read this story, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Jack Dolan, staff writer, reports:

In late June, as a group of mountaineers descended a treacherous glacier high in the Peruvian Andes, they spotted a dark, out-of-place lump resting on the blinding white snow.

When they approached, they realized it wasn’t a rock, as they had initially assumed. 

It was a corpse. 

When they got a little closer, they could tell from the out-of-date clothes and the condition of the skin that the dead man had been there for a very long time. A miraculously well-preserved California driver’s license in the man’s pocket identified him as Bill Stampfl, a mountaineer from Chino who had been buried by an avalanche in 2002.

Avalanches begin as loose, flowing rivers of ice and snow that sweep their victims off their feet and wash them down the mountain. When the frozen debris stops, it quickly solidifies into something like a concrete tomb.
But in recent years, as the planet has warmed and ice has melted at an alarming rate, receding glaciers on the upper reaches of many of the world’s most celebrated and deadly peaks have begun surrendering the bodies of long-lost mountaineers.
It’s a blessing and a relief for grieving families who crave closure, but it creates a grim chore for public officials whose job it is to respectfully remove the remains.

Last year, on the heels of a heat wave that triggered the fastest loss of glacial ice in Swiss history, the boot of a German climber who disappeared in 1986 began poking out of a well-traveled glacier near the mountain town of Zermatt, not far from the Matterhorn.
In the Himalayas, where hundreds of adventurers have perished on the slopes of Mt. Everest since the 1920s, Nepali officials have been forced to launch risky, arduous expeditions to retrieve the recently revealed — and rapidly thawing — corpses.
“Because of global warming, the ice sheet and glaciers are fast melting and the dead bodies that remained buried all these years are now becoming exposed,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Assn., told the BBC in 2019.
And now, a similarly gruesome scenario has played out on the slopes of 22,000-foot Huascaran, Peru’s highest mountain.

The warming planet is “definitely the reason we found Bill,” said Ryan Cooper, a personal trainer from Las Vegas who was among the group of climbers who discovered Stampfl’s body a few weeks ago.
When Stampfl and two climbing partners disappeared in 2002, rescuers went looking for them. They found one body, that of Steve Erskine, but Matthew Richardson and Stampfl could not be located.
“If Bill had been on top of the ice they would have found him, but he was buried back then,” Cooper said in an interview.

A lot has changed in 22 years.
Hauscaran is the highest point, and crown jewel, of the Cordillera Blanca, a region of breathtaking natural beauty that’s home to a dozen peaks higher than 20,000 feet and hundreds of alpine glaciers.
These ancient, frozen reservoirs supply irrigation and hydroelectric power to much of Peru. But, as with glaciers everywhere on the planet as temperatures have risen, those in the Cordillera Blanca have lost significant mass, as much as 27% in the last five decades, according to official estimates.

Cooper said he didn’t understand the extent and speed of the changes underway until days before his guided climb was supposed to begin. He and his brother, Wes Warne, were hanging out in the Peruvian mountain town of Huaraz, listening in as other climbers and guides compared notes.
They heard the glaciers were melting so fast that previously manageable crevasses — cracks caused by natural movement of the ice — had turned into deep, yawning chasms up to 60 feet wide that could swallow an entire team of climbers.
And they heard that many guides had begun steering their clients to more stable summits, because conditions on Huascaran had become so dicey.
Nevertheless, Cooper’s team decided to give their planned route a try.

The five days they spent on the glaciers were tense, Cooper said, an up-close look at the chaos warmer-than-expected temperatures can cause.
“You’re just hearing avalanches, you’re hearing rock fall, you’re hearing ice fall all around you,” Cooper said. “I’ve never been on a mountain that was so active.”
Eventually, the guides decided not to push for the summit, Cooper said. Instead, they led the group down an older, less traveled route that had been the standard track “back in the day,” he said, before shifting terrain prompted climbers to start taking a different approach.
That’s where they came upon Stampfl’s body, at about 17,000 feet, resting alone, undisturbed and almost completely exposed.
In other cases, when just part of a body is sticking out of the ice, excavation can be a grueling ordeal. Rescuers use shovels, axes, boiling water — anything to help coax and pry remains free.
As soon as they discovered Stampfl was American, Cooper said, he and his brother set aside their frustrations about not making the summit. They now had a much higher goal — getting Bill home.
Once they had climbed down far enough to have cellphone reception, a flurry of text messages began, and Cooper’s wife joined the search for Stampfl’s family.
Before long, Cooper found himself on the phone with Joseph Stampfl, Bill’s son.

Please open the link to finish the story.

Categories DeSantis, Environment, Florida, Hoax, Lies

Judd Legum: DeSantis Bans Accurate Sex Education

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2024 //
20

Judd Legum of Popular Information tells the sad story of what happened to sex education in Florida. Responding to Ron DeSantis, the legislature passed a bill declaring what must be taught and what cannot be taught, in accord with the ideology of rightwing Republicans, not science. The law requires districts to have their sex Ed curriculum approved by the state. Large numbers of students are getting no sex education at all. That may be what DeSanths wants.

Legum writes:

In May 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed Florida House Bill 1069, a law that requires sex education classes in the state to conform to right-wing ideology. Specifically, the law requires all sex education classes to teach students that sex is binary, “either male or female,” even though that is inaccurate. It also mandates that students are instructed that sex is defined exclusively by “internal and external genitalia present at birth,” and these sex roles are “binary, stable, and unchangeable.” This requirement erases the existence of trans and nonbinary people. Schools also must “teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students” and “the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage.”

To enforce these new rules and other aspects of the DeSantis administration’s political agenda, HB 1069 also requires “all materials used to teach reproductive health” to be approved in advance by the Florida Department of Education (FDE) or use textbooks pre-approved by the state. Previously, sex education curricula were approved by district school boards. Florida parents can opt-out of sex education lessons on behalf of their children. 

The FDE instructed school districts to submit their materials for sex education by September 30, 2023. The school districts met the deadline, but the FDE never responded. Florida counties were placed in a no-win situation as not teaching sex education, a mandatory course, at all is a violation of state law. 

Several Florida school districts — including Hillsborough, Orange and Polk Counties, three of Florida’s largest — decided not to teach sex education at all during the 2023-24 school year, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Other counties, including Broward and Seminole Counties, taught sex education classes without getting the legally required approval. 

Legum reviewed a copy of the training materials for reviewers of district plans. Among other things, it requires these “experts” to watch for the following criteria:

The “experts” are directed to evaluate all materials on 11 separate criteria, some inscrutable. For example, all materials must be evaluated on the criteria of “Male and Female Reproductive Roles,” “Principles of Individual Freedom,” “Critical Race Theory,” and “Social Justice.” 

Please open the link to learn more about how the Florida Department of Education trains reviewers of district plans.

Categories Curriculum, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Science

Florida: State Health Officials Try to Derail Abortion Amendment

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2024 //
5

At Governor DeSantis’ insistence, Florida enacted one of the toughest abortion bans in the nation. Abortion is banned in the state at six weeks of pregnancy. Very few, if any, women know they are pregnant at six weeks. Advocates for reproductive rights immediately began mobilizing to fight the abortion ban. They drafted a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would protect a woman’s right to an abortion. Despite DeSantis’ opposition, they gathered signatures, fought legal battles, and got the measure on the November ballot, where it is called Amendment 4.

DeSantis continues to fight passage of the referendum.

The Orlando Sentinel reports on the latest state plot to deceive voters:

Florida health officials reiterated Thursday that state law allows abortions at any point in pregnancy to save the life of the mother, responding to concerns that Florida’s new six-week abortion ban is tying doctors’ hands and putting women in danger.

The state’s “provider alert” said abortions can be performed “to save the pregnant woman’s life or avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” Failing to provide that “life-saving treatment” could constitute medical malpractice, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration and the Florida Department of Health warned in a notice to providers distributed by email and social media.The notice was released a day after several doctors supporting Amendment 4 — which would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution — said in news conference that the exceptions in Florida’s abortion ban aren’t real exceptions.

“These so-called exceptions are a mirage,” said Dr. Jerry Goodman, a Sarasota-based OB-GYN, who spoke at the pro-Amendment 4 event on Wednesday. “Patients face overwhelming legal and procedural and logistical hurdles making accessing care nearly impossible, particularly at three ‘o clock in the morning when these emergencies often arise.”Florida’s abortion ban, which went into effect May 1, has exceptions up to 15 weeks for pregnancies resulting from rape, incest, or human trafficking, or if a “fatal fetal abnormality” is detected, the notice added. The memo included a line in bold that “a miscarriage is not an abortion.”

Abortions are permissible for women who experience premature rupture of membranes, as well as ectopic or molar pregnancies, all of which are serious complications, according to the memo.

But several doctors supporting Amendment 4 said at the news conference that the state’s abortion exceptions could be hard to meet. For instance, the law requires women who are raped to provide legal documentation, such as a police report, a barrier that the doctors said can delay care or block access.

The state’s ban has sparked fear and led to confusion over what constitutes a serious health risk under Florida’s “narrow medical exceptions,” according to a report from Physicians for Human Rights released on Tuesday.

“Several clinicians described cases of being required by their hospitals to wait until patients become ‘sick enough’ to qualify for care,” the report found.

A physician who performs an illegal abortion could face a third-degree felony charge punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

State officials said they issued the notice in response to “misinformation” about Florida’s abortion laws.

Their guidance comes as voters prepare to take up Amendment 4, which would overturn the state’s six-week ban and protect abortion access up until viability, typically defined as about 24 weeks of pregnancy. If approved by at least 60% of voters in November, it also would guarantee abortion access “when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.”

Dr. Chelsea Daniels, a Miami-based provider, also urged voters to support Amendment 4. She said she has seen patients with nonviable pregnancies who have been turned away from care.

“I saw a patient a few weeks ago who came to me with four ultrasounds from four different clinics showing a nonviable pregnancy and she was still carrying this pregnancy when she came to me,” Daniels said.

Opponents argue Amendment 4 is vague and misleads voters by failing to define key terms like “viability” and “healthcare provider.” A group called Physicians Against Amendment 4 denounced the measure at an event earlier this month in Orlando, calling it “overreaching,” “too permissive” and “irresponsible.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis and state officials have been under fire from critics who accuse them of unlawfully using taxpayer resources to try to sway the results of Amendment 4. The agency launched a webpage earlier this month, proclaiming that existing Florida law “protects women” while the initiative enshrining abortion rights into the state constitution “threatens women’s safety.”

It also released a “public service announcement” video that includes information about Florida’s abortion laws and an assurance that “Florida cares about women and families.”

Two lawsuits have been filed challenging the agency’s webpage, and Florida Democrats have pushed for a criminal investigation.

Florida law stipulates that “no employee in the career service” shall “use the authority of his or her position to secure support for, or oppose, any candidate, party, or issue in a partisan election or affect the results thereof.”

State officials, though, say the website is informational and complies with that law.

About the same time, a Florida judge ordered an ob-gyn doctor in Orlando to pay a $10,000 fine for performing 193 abortions after the law passed and was caught up in litigation. The doctor and the clinic where she worked tried to get information from the state about when he law went into effect. Getting no response, the doctor continued to provide abortions. The judge acknowledged that the doctor and the clinic unknowingly violated the law but decided that they broke the law and needed to be punished. The clinic was fined $193,000, a fine of $1,000 for each abortion.

Categories DeSantis, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Health, Resistance

Florida: Who Is the Worst College President in the State? Sasse or Corcoran?

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2024 //
3

Nate Monroe of the Jacksonville, Florida, Times Union poses a challenging question: who is the worst college president in the state? Ben Sasse or Richard Corcoran? Sasse, the former Senator from Nebraska, was hand-picked by Governor DeSantis to be President of the state university system, the University of Florida. He hired several of his former staff in D.C. and paid them lavish salaries to stay in D.C. and work remotely. He retired after one year, with a $1 million annual salary until 2028. Corcoran, former Speaker of the House in Florida, former state education commissioner, rightwing ideologue, was selected by DeSantis to lead the conversion of tiny (700 students) New College from a bastion of progressivism to become a libertarian/Christian Hillsdale of the South.

He writes:

Richard Corcoran wasn’t about to let that runza monger hog the spotlight. No sir, if there’s going to be a disgraced university president in the news, by god it’s going to be Richard Michael Corcoran of New College of Florida, the once-respected liberal arts school turned raggedy right-wing academy for Clarence Thomas scholars.

Ben Sasse, the University of Florida’s former president, was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, making him Florida’s main character for the first half of the week. Not to be outdone, Corcoran’s latest sin is having his underlings toss a truckload of books into the garbage, according to a report Thursday from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s Steven Walker, combining the oafish meanness of Matilda’s parents with the imagery of dystopian fiction. In a response befitting this disinformation age, Corcoran’s flaks called the account “false” — a bold statement in light of the video and photo evidence available — before then, with no hint of irony, confirming the account: “The images seen online of a dumpster of library materials is related to the standard weeding process.”

Some hapless Corcoran toady pointed to a state law to explain why the books couldn’t be donated or made available to students, as they had in the past, but that law merely confirms the clear fact that New College could have done exactly that. This was no accident: The books bound for the landfill included titles from the college’s former Gender and Diversity Center — a collection of words that, in the Free State of Florida, generally invite state censorship. Heaven forbid college kids read “Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate,” a book a curious New College student would have to dumpster dive to find now.

Corcoran is that most fitting a Floridian for the DeSantis era: a committed, strident ideologue, except in his own affairs. During his tenure in the state House, for example, he was known as a rude and miserly fiscal hawk, possessed with the belief college administrators were overpaid and spending lavishly. He seemed to believe that until he began trawling for a sinecure from his political superior, Gov. Ron DeSantis, in the world of public education. That first took the form of an appointment as Florida’s Education Commissioner, a mostly undistinguished term save for a bid-rigging scandal centered on the management of a small Florida school district.

As commissioner, he got the public attention he so often seems to crave, but his true apparent goal was becoming one of those overpaid college administrators himself. He gunned for a chance to run Florida State University — a crusade during which he flew a bit close to the sun — but ultimately landed a job running New College of Florida. He was installed by a remade board of trustees, a group of fanatics selected by DeSantis with the intention of making an example out of the small liberal-arts school.

Corcoran, an opponent of public education (save for his ability to make a buck off it), quickly set about turning New College into the Hillsdale of the South, a conservative higher-education bulwark. Vital to this work was securing for himself a plum compensation package worth about $1.1 million, a staggering sum that is among the highest in Florida despite New College being the state’s smallest public college.

It’s been one controversy after the next with Corcoran, but that so often seems to be the point.

Corcoran and Sasse’s hirings at their respective schools seemed to usher in a sea change in how higher education is run in Florida: experienced administrators were out, politicians were in. DeSantis carefully chose the appointees who run Florida’s college system, centralizing power over this diversified set of schools and allowing him to exert his will on issues like tenure and diversity programs. Every high-level vacancy in a Florida college prompts a fevered and terrified concern: which low-life politician is DeSantis going to stick them with next?

But Sasse and Corcoran have generated so much heat — Sasse in particular has come under criticism this week from no less than U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz and Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis — it’s tempting to hope this experience has even soured DeSantis on this particular project. The problem with useful idiots is that they happen to be … well, you know.

Nate Monroe is a Florida columnist for the USA Today Network. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU. Email him at nmonroe@gannett.com.

Categories DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Florida, Higher Education

Florida: School District Restores 36 Banned Books, to Settle Lawsuit

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2024 //
1

A school district in Florida agreed to settle a federal lawsuit by restoring 36 banned books to school libraries. The censorship of books that contain references to LGBT+ people or to race/racism was launched by Governor DeSantis, who wanted to “protect” students from topics he personally finds objectionable. DeSantis considers such topics to be “woke,” which he has vowed to expel from the state. Other lawsuits are pending in the state.

TALLAHASSEE — Authors of the children’s book “And Tango Makes Three” and parents of students have reached a settlement with the Nassau County school district that will lead to 36 books returning to school libraries after being removed last year, according to court documents filed this week.

The settlement came in a federal lawsuit filed in May amid widespread controversy about removing books from school libraries in Florida and other states. Two federal lawsuits are pending, for example, about the Escambia County School Board’s removal of books.

“And Tango Makes Three,” which tells the story of two male penguins who raised a penguin chick at New York’s Central Park Zoo, has become a prominent part of the debate in Florida. Lawsuits allege it has been targeted for depicting same-sex parents raising a child.

Nassau County officials said they removed “And Tango Makes Three” and two other books last year because of a lack of circulation, according to the settlement. District officials said they removed 33 other books because of alleged “obscene” material that would violate state law.

But the lawsuit contended “And Tango Makes Three” was removed because of anti-LGBTQ bias, and the settlement includes a statement that district officials “agree that And Tango Makes Three contains no ‘obscene’ material in violation of the obscenity statute, is appropriate for students of all ages, and has pedagogical value.”

The settlement lists 22 other books that are slated to be returned to libraries by Friday. Examples include “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean Auel…

The law firm Selendy Gay PLLC, which represents “And Tango Makes Three” authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson and the parents, issued a news release Thursday that described the settlement as “major.”

“This settlement — a watershed moment in the ongoing battle against book censorship in the United States — significantly restores access to important works that were unlawfully removed from the shelves of Nassau County, Florida’s public school libraries,” Lauren Zimmerman, one of the firm’s attorneys, said in a prepared statement. “Students will once again have access to books from well-known and highly-lauded authors representing a broad range of viewpoints and ideas.”

Categories Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Florida, Freedom to Read

Florida: Is DeSantis’s Star Declining?

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2024 //
8

Ron DeSantis is second only to Trump as the most toxic politician in the U.S. He is cruel. He is mean. He is anti-science. He is anti-intellectual. He is a prude. He signed one of the worst abortion bans in the nation. He banned accurate sex education. He demonized anything related to LGBT issues. He tried to suppress drag queens, but they are performers and are irrepressible.

DeSantis has exercised near-total control over the state because both houses of the legislature are Republican-dominated. Whatever DeSantis wanted, the legislature gave him, including a militia under his command. DeSantis personally drew the map to redistrict the state for Congressional seats; he managed to get rid of one of the state’s majority Black dustricts

Taking personal control of education in Florida has been one of his biggest goals. He has focused on redirecting the curriculum of public schools and colleges. He pushed through legislation that banned honest teaching about race and gender in the schools, including a law known as “Don’t say gay,” which restricted teaching about race, gender, and homosexuality. He demanded a revision of the AP course on African American history to delete ideas and authors he didn’t like. His state education department rejected textbooks that were too honest about climate change.

He encouraged book banning, although he publicly denied it; PEN America, however, identified Florida as the state that banned the most books. He has worked closely with the prudes at Moms for Liberty, aka Moms for Censorship. He packed the State Board of Education with his cronies. He eliminated tenure in higher education.

Friends of DeSantis were selected by the state board of education to be president of public colleges; the top job at the University of Florida was given to a retired politician, who lasted one year, gave hefty salaries to his former staff in DC to work remotely, and stepped down with a salary of $1 million yearly until 2028.

DeSantis destroyed the only progressive public college in the state, New Colmege. He packed the board with right wingers, who hired a politician to be its president, eliminated programs that offended them and recruited athletes to replace the free-thinkers who used to be drawn to the school. His aim: to turn progressive New College into the Hillsdale of the South.

In his zeal to redesign K-12 schooling, DeSantis expanded the state’s voucher programs so that every student in the state, regardless of need, was eligible for a public subsidy. This coming year the state will spend about $4 billion on vouchers for private schools, most of which are religious. Most of the students who use vouchers never attended public schools; sought voucher program is subsidizing the tuition of students who were already attending elite private schools or religious schools.

The voucher schools, by the way, are not required to take state tests. They have no accountability to the state taxpayers who fund them.

He appointed a doctor as the state’s “surgeon general” who was critical of vaccines and masking.

DeSantis was looking unstoppable. He seemed to be in line to inherit Trump’s mantle, as leader of the forces of bigotry, anti-science, and anti-intellectualism. But then Trump jumped into the 2024 race and crushed DeSantis in the primaries.

DeSantis is term-limited. He cannot run again in 2026. Competitors are already measuring the drapes in the Governors’ landing.

And DeSantis is starting to see rebuffs that would have been unimaginable before this year.

Two years ago, DeSantis endorsed school board candidates who shared his extreme rightwing views about race and gender. Of the 30 candidates he endorsed, more than 80% won their seat. DeSantis boasted that Florida was the state where “woke goes to die.” But in recent school board elections, only about half the candidates supported by DeSantis and his allies “Moms for Liberty” were elected.

DeSantis was also embarrassed by a sex scandal involving one of his favorite power couples, Bridget Ziegler–a co-founder of Moms for Liberty and a school board member in Sarasota–and Christian Ziegler–chair of the state Republican Party. The Zieglers got caught in a messy threesome, which led to Christian’s resignation from his position and Bridget’s refusal to resign from the school board. Read Bridget’s Wikipedia entry for the sordid details. Moms for Liberty, which crusades against gay sex, dropped Bridget’s name as a co-founder and pretended she didn’t exist.

Then came the latest fiasco: the DeSantis administration planned to put a major development into one of the state’s most important parks, the Jonathan Dickinson State Park. The proposed development included a 350-room hotel and a golf course. The park is near Hobe Sound. It consists of 11,500 acres. Development was planned for other state parks too.

The uproar from people of all political persuasions was instantaneous and loud. “Hands off our park!”

DeSantis dropped the plan.

On August 28, the Washington Post reported:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday pulled the plug on a proposal that would have paved over native habitats and protected beaches in state parks to build golf courses, pickleball courts and large hotels.

The Republican governor backed away from the controversial plan announced by his administration last week after even members of his own party protested. Hundreds demonstrated at the nine parks targeted for development.

“So this is something that was leaked,” DeSantis said at a news conference Wednesday in Winter Haven when he was asked about the plan. “It was not approved by me. I never saw that. They’re going back to the drawing board.”

It was the first time DeSantis has spoken publicly about the issue. The “Great Outdoors Initiative” was announced last week by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and called for building three golf courses at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, a stretch of undeveloped land north of Palm Beach popular for its trails and birding.

The plan also proposed building new lodges with space for hundreds of guests at Anastasia State Park near St. Augustine and Topsail Hill Preserve in the Panhandle. The latter has sand dunes that the state park service describes as “especially remarkable because they are untouched by development.”

Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel wondered who paid whom and who was profiting:

Plans by the Ron DeSantis administration to put golf courses and a hotel into one of Florida’s state parks appear to have suffered a fast and fatal blow.

It wasn’t just that Democrats objected. Virtually everyone did. In fact, Florida Republicans tripped over each other to trash the idea.

“Absolutely ridiculous” was how Rick Scott and Marco Rubio described the way DeSantis’ Department of Environmental Protection wanted to fast-track the controversial development. GOP Congressman Brian Mast called it “bullsh*t.”

It didn’t stop there. Everyone from the Florida Senate president to the state’s Republican CFO said it was nuts to allow a development company to plow 45 holes of golf and a hotel into South Florida’s Jonathan Dickinson State Park, a preserve known for its expansive scrub-jay habitat.

The outcry was so overwhelming that the out-of-state group planning the golf course announced Sunday it was pulling out.

But that only raised more questions. Chief among them: How on earth could one particular development group claim it was abandoning plans for a development opportunity that had never before been publicly advertised?

A key question I had all along: Who’s going to profit? In fact, last week I asked state environmental officials only one question: How will these development companies be chosen?

The answer should’ve been swift and simple: Of course we will open this up to a competitive bidding process. That’s how ethical government works.

Instead, a spokeswoman acknowledged my question, but then never answered it. That was supremely suspicious.

To put an even stinkier cherry on top of this stench sundae, the Palm Beach Post reported that the company had a former Florida secretary of the environment on its payroll as a lobbyist. Because what could be more Florida than one of the state’s top former environmental officials trying to literally pave the way to environmental destruction?

The whole plan reeks of secretive, inside dealing.

Still, inside dealing — specifically no-bid contracts where political pals and cronies cash in on public assets — isn’t new. In fact, it’s been a sordid hallmark of the DeSantis administration, whether it’s a  $100,000 campaign donor that scored $46 million worth of no-bid COVID contracts or no-bid deals at the state’s new Disney governmental services district.

Most Florida Republicans didn’t seem to mind these no-bid deals … until now.

So what changed? Well, two things:

1) This deal was exceptionally bad. Floridians tolerate a lot of rotten behavior. But plans to desecrate land that taxpayers spent millions to protect was just too much.

2) Also, DeSantis’ political clout is seriously diminished. For most of the past six years, Florida’s governor had total control over this state. His fellow Republicans would do anything he asked. But DeSantis’ star has dimmed. His presidential campaign collapsed. His local endorsements fell flat in last week’s primary elections. Once touted as the heir apparent to the MAGA throne, DeSantis has been shoved aside by the JD Vances and Matt Gaetzes of the world. He’s now a lame-duck governor with much glummer prospects.

It’s not clear whether development plans for the other state parks are dead, but it’s hard to believe they will go forward.

As we watch Ron DeSantis’ star fade away, we can all breathe a sigh of relief and hope there’s not a return appearance.

Categories Cruelty, DeSantis, Disruption, Extremism, Florida

Pierre Tristam: The Great Florida Voucher Swindle! Welfare for the Rich!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2024 //
7

Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive in Flagler County, Florida. In this brilliant article, he describes vouchers as welfare for the rich, a new kind of state socialism. He points out that vouchers are destroying public schools.

I want to acknowledge that I cribbed the article from the blog of the Network for Public Education, which you should subscribe to. It’s free, and it’s curated by the great Peter Greene. If you have a passion for public schools, sign up.

Tristam writes:

It would be absurd, I think we can all agree, if Paul Renner, our esteemed Speaker of the House and Flagler’s chief pork slabber, were to champion a bill entitling every citizen to take out $2,000 from their local policing budgets so they can have their own private security and call it “Police Choice.” After all, don’t we all pay taxes? Shouldn’t we have a choice how that money is spent? Don’t we free Floridians know best? Sheriff Rick Staly would be the first to tell Renner he’s out of his mind. 

It would be absurd, I think we can all agree, if Renner, claiming that taxpayers shouldn’t have their park choices limited to Holland and Ralph Carter Park, were to champion a bill entitling every household to take out $1,000 from the parks and rec budget so they could help subsidize their Disney and Universal experiences and call it “Park Choice.” Even Renner’s chamber of commerce courtesans would tell him he’s out of his mind. 

But not too many people told Renner he was out of his mind when he did exactly that to public schools: he championed a bill entitling every child in Florida to $8,000 a year to spend on private education, at the public school system’s expense, and called it “school choice.” The few who did were themselves told they’re out of their mind. 

“School choice” is an orchestrated demolition of public schools and the social contract. The focus-group euphemism masks the thieving of tax dollars to subsidize private schools, transforming what was once an aspiration of  fringe Christian and anti-government militants into state doctrine. “I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have public schools,” the televangelist and founder of the Moral Majority Jerry Falwell said in a 1979 sermon. “The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be.” Falwell lived long enough to see Jeb Bush’s Florida reopen that door. Renner swung the wrecking ball. 

Flagler County schools are losing close to $11 million this year to “choice,” siphoned out so 1,250 students can get their $8,000 either for private school or home school. True, not every one of these students was attending Flagler schools before, so it’s not a net loss of 1,250 students. But very few of these students were either qualifying or getting taxpayer subsidies before. Exactly 136 did in Flagler just four years ago, costing the district less than $1 million. Now anyone qualifies, including millionaire families, and every dollar going to them is a dollar diverted from public education. 

That figure of 1,250 students is for the first full year of this “choice” being in effect. Coming years will only accelerate the drain on public schools, because if you have children you’d be out of your mind not to take the $8,000-per-child handout, especially since most of you aren’t paying anywhere near $8,000 in school taxes each year. The rest of us, and even more so businesses and renters, are subsidizing the swindle. 

Advocates of the swindle have come up with a couple of defenses: first, that they’re taxpayers who should choose where their money is spent–the untenable argument that would then support “police choice” and “park choice,” and if you push that logic far enough, “war choice,” as in: you may spend my money on the Ukraine war but not the genocide of Palestinians. But in our social contract how our taxes are spent is not an a-la-carte option, though Boomer narcissists who can’t see past the hedge of their gated community think it should be.

Second, the advocates claim the dollars “follow the child,” as if public money going to private subsidies were new money that doesn’t affect public school budgets. It’s excellent propaganda. But it’s a double-barreled lie–double-barreled, because not only is every student lost to the public schools a loss of $8,000, but every student who was never enrolled in  public school but is now getting the $8,000 compounds that loss, since these are public dollars that would have otherwise been allocated to public schools. 

Incidentally, we don’t say that people receiving food stamps are on “food choice.” We don’t say that people getting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families are on “poverty choice.” When people get free money from the government, we call it welfare. Ditching the ordurous school-choice euphemism and applying the language’s proper definition–school welfare–exposes the state’s fabrications.

Facts do the rest. The welfare kings and queens this time are much richer than those on food stamps. As the Miami Herald reported Sunday, “Last school year, the average income of families who provided income data and received scholarships for a family of four was $86,000.” (To be eligible for food choice this year a family of four can’t have a household income above $62,400.) 

According to Step Up for Students, the state’s arm administering school welfare, 82 percent of handouts went to students attending religious schools–madrassas–like one in Palm Coast that boasts of “raising champions for Christ” and still sports a crusader for a mascot, which is no less offensive to a few hundred million people than if it flew the Confederate or Nazi flags. Our tax dollars are subsidizing that kind of bigotry. 

More perniciously: When Bush started the welfare-to-school wagon he limited it to the disabled and the needy. Minorities benefited disproportionately. It was a form of segregation in reverse, like affirmative action. Renner’s scheme, like so much under Gov. Ron DeSantis, revives pre-Brown v. Board of Education segregation. By eliminating eligibility barriers, wealthier families use the subsidy as a bridge to very expensive public schools whose tuition keeps the riff raff out, even with $8,000 subsidies. A family might’ve afforded a $9,000 school but couldn’t afford a $15,000 school. So clever schools adjust their tuition just so as a barrier to undesirables and to make extra profit, thus cashing in twice over: in dollars and in whitening their own “choice” of who gets in. Et voilà. Jerry Falwell’s jolly jowly ideal realized. 

Finally, to make sure the dagger cuts deeply and fatally, the state makes it mandatory for school districts to advertise school welfare on their websites. Districts like Flagler must make it as easy as possible for parents to apply for the money and get out of the district, while the state provides a detailed list of private schools to choose from, including, of course, every madrassa under the sky. State and districts could not be shouting louder: Public schools suck. Here’s $8,000. $16,000. $24,000. Now leave.

As students continue to be bribed out, public schools will be left with less money, all the responsibilities for higher standards, more challenging students, crumbling buildings and, revoltingly, school board members and superintendents in full Stockholm Syndrome mode. You hear them in board meetings not only talking about school welfare but praising it, pandering to it, the way the condemned suck up to their executioner. 

There are exceptions. Our own Colleen Conklin for years has been sounding the alerts about the swindle, starting with the charter schemes. She thankfully kept a few of those out of the district, back when local school boards had a say. They no longer do. And Conklin is leaving in November. Our remaining board members love the school welfare swindle and are probably trying to figure out how to cash in with their own kids without looking like public school traitors. 

But as Jerry Falwell implied, it’s a matter of time before those school board members are surplus property, like public school buildings, like buses, for that matter like teachers, counselors, paraprofessionals, bus drivers and administrators, all of whom are already treated like disposable obstructions in the way of school welfare and the cult known as “parental rights.”

Categories DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization, Vouchers
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