Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill on Friday designed to ensure curriculum transparency for parents, promising “education, not indoctrination” in the Sunshine State.
DeSantis, who has deemed it the “year of the parent” in Florida, briefly went over some of the key objectives the Sunshine State has reached over the past few years in its fight to champion parents over bureaucrats. One of the first things he did when he took office, DeSantis noted, was eliminate Common Core; and more recently, that has come to further fruition with the elimination of the Florida Statewide Assessment (FSA). Florida is also “very proud” to have had schools open, even when many places kept them closed.
“And this is just a situation where we either had to do what was right for the kids or subcontract out everything to Fauci, and we were not willing to do that in Florida. People like Fauci were wrong. They wanted these schools closed indefinitely,” DeSantis said.
They also passed the Parents’ Bill of Rights, and part of that, DeSantis said, was not allowing school districts to force mask children.
“Parents want education for their kids,” not indoctrination, the governor continued, detailing how the Chinese coronavirus pandemic created a shift as more parents began going to school board meetings to ask tough questions. The Biden administration, working with the National School Board Association, “didn’t like parents having a voice,” he said, noting the letter from the National School Board Association, “engineered” by Biden and unions, which characterized parents as domestic terrorists.
“There is a debate in this country about what role parents have in the education of their kids,” he said, making it clear that Florida believes parents have a “fundamental” role.
“And that’s how it’s going to be in the state of Florida,” he said before laying out what he described as “probably the strongest curriculum transparency legislation in the country.”
“And what this is going to do, is it is going to require transparency with respect to the materials that are being taught in classrooms” or in school libraries, he explained. “And so if that’s something that is going to be used, that is something a parent would have the right to understand and know that’s going out there.”
“It also provides an ability for parents to review this and lodge objections if they find the material to either deviate from state standards or just be inappropriate,” he said, noting they have seen some “incredibly, incredibly disturbing stuff” in some middle school libraries.
The legislation, he added, also sets curriculum standards in terms of teacher professional development and the curriculum, making sure they align with required instruction and state standards. He used Common Core and Critical Race Theory as examples of material that is a no-go.
“We want to make sure again we’re doing education, not indoctrination,” he said, describing the legislation as “a really significant win for parents.”