Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Attacks on school boards are baseless and unfair
Over the last few months, controversies surrounding school boards both locally and nationwide have garnered more media attention than what our humble governmental bodies are used to. Manufactured crises around critical race theory (which is not taught in K-12 schools) and mask mandates now dominate the news and the public-speaking segments of our meetings.
Misinformation and fake moral emergencies have served as immense distractions from the day-to-day business of educating students during a time when our students’ academic and social-emotional well-being need more attention than ever. This is no coincidence. This is simply a ramping up of an anti-public education agenda that state leadership and the GOP have perpetrated for decades.
This summer, the DeSantis administration escalated this attack on public education by spreading misinformation about the safety and efficacy of masking in schools, defunding school districts for implementing public safety measures recommended by medical professionals during a deadly pandemic, and recklessly spending taxpayer dollars on frivolous lawsuits defending this position. They paid over $3 million to a consultant to distribute federally funded checks to public servants so that DeSantis could wrongfully take credit for those bonuses. His administration then blew a deadline for applying for $2.3 billion in federal aid to help public schools address academic and social-emotional gaps created by the pandemic while falsely claiming that Florida’s public schools did not need the money. Let me be clear: We need that funding, and if we do not receive it because of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ malfeasance, our children are the ones that will be directly affected.
Attacks on public education are not new. Education policy in Florida has for years been dominated by an expansion of vouchers that funnel our tax dollars into private schools, some of which openly discriminate against LGBTQ+ students. As a public school teacher, I’ve seen students return from those private schools deeply unsatisfied with the services received. In particular, I’ve witnessed how the needs of ESE students went unmet and then watched how the public school system had to work overtime to remediate the damage that was done. In the meantime, this irresponsible policy continues to drain Broward County Public Schools by the tens of millions each year. The slow but steady defunding of public education attracts little attention outside of professional and labor groups, but it is one of the biggest threats to the system of high-quality public schools that serve as a cornerstone of our democracy.
Gov. DeSantis and the Florida GOP have recently stated that they will be targeting school board races in upcoming elections. Last month, a bill was filed by state Sen.
Joe Gruters, who is also chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, to make school board races partisan. School boards should not be partisan. We need to work across partisan lines to improve education, and I realize the irony in saying that after pointing out the specific ways that Republicans have damaged public education. The problem is that the attacks on public education have come specifically from one side of the partisan divide, and we need to both identify and change that reality.
We are nearly two years into the COVID19 pandemic, during which children have suffered immensely. We have yet to realize the full impacts of this pandemic on the academic and mental health of our kids and addressing those issues should not only be the priority of school boards but of all facets of our society.
While this administration shirks its responsibilities, school boards across Florida try to do more with less, while fending off baseless attacks, and we will continue to do so. Gov. DeSantis has taxpayer dollars, resources, a Republican-led legislature, and the energy of fervent supporters at his disposal. It is my sincerest wish that he would use all of that to empower public school systems in this state to simply educate students.