Free Florida? Not for South Florida school leaders

Last week, the Palm Beach County School Board wasted nearly an hour responding to Gov. DeSantis’ thought police. Why?

On Nov. 18, School Superintendent Mike Burke received a letter from Florida Department of Education Senior Chancellor Jacob Oliva. He told Burke that the district remained out of compliance with the “Parents’ Bill of Rights.”

Oliva drones on for a page and a half. His focus, however, is on the “don’t say gay” law that is part scapegoating and part harassment.

Palm Beach isn’t alone. Oliva is going after nine other districts, including Broward and, for good measure, the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind.

“Don’t say gay” bans any instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation from kindergarten through third grade, which wasn’t happening anyway. It also bans such discussions in higher grades unless the material is “age or developmentally appropriate,” a standard that the Department of Education has yet to define clearly.

In his letter, Oliva touches on some of the usual LGBTQ hot points — bathroom use and gender, participation in sports by trans students. He told Burke to “evaluate your policies” and report back.

To do so, the board’s attorney explained, first meant revising the district’s equity statement. The board crafted it last year, after consulting with community groups, and intended the document to be a strong statement against discrimination.

Right off, however, the board angered some by including a line about “dismantling structures rooted in white advantage.” That line then came out.

This time, board members cut more than half the statement. They began from a draft that Burke proposed and traded sentences, even words, back and forth. The final product was largely the work of new board member Edwin Ferguson.

That product is a bland commitment to “safe, equitable and inclusive learning environments.” In Free Florida, though, bland is king when it comes to matters of race or sexual orientation. Soon enough, history textbooks may echo Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and call slavery “a necessary evil.”

You can appreciate what board members faced. DeSantis has shown that he will remove any elected official — with or without evidence — if doing so might help him politically. Since all the DeSantis wannabes failed to defeat any board incumbent in Palm Beach County, the governor would love to put a proxy in place.

Burke included the new statement with his response to Oliva. On Thursday, the Board of Education will consider that response and those from the other offending districts.

Technically, Oliva reports to Education Commissioner Manny Diaz. In the Florida Senate, Diaz regularly advanced the interests of the charter school industry that employed him and cared little about traditional public schools.

But DeSantis chose Diaz, as he chose the charter-friendly Richard Corcoran before him. In practical terms, DeSantis is Oliva’s boss.

Oliva has served him faithfully. Last fall, he argued in court that masks don’t help to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in schools. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine is the latest rebuttal of Oliva’s assertion.

Eight months ago, Oliva rejected math textbooks that DeSantis claimed would “indoctrinate” students by sneaking in messages about critical race theory and relied too much on Common Core, a favorite Republican straw man. Yet Oliva was chancellor when the department adopted standards under which publishers produced those textbooks.

Oliva’s letter continues to propagate the myth, which DeSantis spreads, that schools are “sexualizing” students. Yet “don’t say gay” supporters offered no proof that it’s happening.

Instead, DeSantis and his shouty supporters at school board meetings wage a campaign of innuendo and harassment against public education under the appealing label of “parents’ rights.” It began with opposition to mask mandates and has escalated.

Districts have reacted differently. Palm Beach and Alachua counties have withdrawn their LGBTQ guides. Leon County Superintendent Rocky Hanna said the Department of Education is “trying to out (LGBTQ) students who are not ready to come out.”

In his letter to Burke, Oliva said, “As a reminder, parents have civil and administrative remedies for school district violations” of the “Parents’ Bill of Rights.” One such lawsuit has been filed in Palm Beach County.

Oliva thus was sending a warning. Of course. That’s what the thought police do. That’s what happens in Free Florida.