Together, we can reclaim Florida’s public school system
A free and inclusive public education system — where children feel safe from racism, bigotry, and hatred — is the bedrock of our democracy and serves as a beacon of hope, unity, and progress for all.
Unfortunately, opportunistic politicians and partisan advocacy groups have targeted public schools as a battleground for their own private agendas, threatening what is the foundation of our success as a modern nation.
The promise of uniform, efficient, safe, secure, high-quality, free public schools is now in peril. Florida has become ground zero for radical, anti-education zealotry. Under the pretext of “parental rights” state lawmakers, the governor and partisan organizations have undertaken a highly orchestrated campaign to defund, destabilize and dismantle our system of public education. And, it has been working. There are now more than 7,000 teacher vacancies while books have been stripped from the shelves.
Those teachers that remain face an ultimatum to either lose their license and careers or cope with a hostile learning environment. Schools themselves have become militarized and policed leading to an explosion in suspensions, arrests, expulsions, and involuntary psychiatric detentions that violate children’s basic privacy rights. Instead of making schools safer through increased access to mental health resources, behavioral interventions, and cultures of consent, the state of Florida has turned our schools into a battleground.
Meanwhile, partisan extremist organizations are pushing a narrative that public schools are “unfit” to teach children, even as they run for or are handpicked and placed by the governor in the school board seats and the trustee boards of Florida’s public colleges and universities. Using a frenzy of false accusations and hysteria for political cover, the governor and his allies have put their plan into action through legislation, such as The Parental Rights in Education Act (Don’t Say Gay) and the Individual Freedom Act (Stop WOKE) to censor teacher instruction on LGBTQ+ and Black history, civil rights, and slavery.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and many other civil rights organizations have activated to push back against the flurry of unjust and unconstitutional laws and policies. It’s our job to protect the civil rights of Floridians now under attack. The time is now for each of us to activate our voices and our power, not just as lawyers and advocates, but as parents, students, educators, administrators and members of our community.
It can be daunting to imagine taking up a fight for justice as we fight simply to feed and provide for our families. But we know there is power in the collective and in the simplicity of showing up when, where and however each of us can. If not in Tallahassee
as our heavily gerrymandered Legislature convenes, then at your local council, school board or board of trustees meeting. If not at the council or board meetings, at your local school. If your job and responsibilities keep you from getting to the schoolhouse, send a letter, email or phone call to an elected. And, no matter what, at every opportunity and against whatever odds, vote. Vote to reclaim our democracy. Vote to demand our freedom. Vote to demonstrate our power. And, most of all, vote for Florida’s children — all of them.