DeSantis makes stop at Freedom Institute in Naples
Discusses education reform, economics
Gov. Ron DeSantis took a slight detour from governing Wednesday at a speaking engagement in Naples but hit all his hot button issues on education and economics.
The governor was the first guest speaker for a speaker series by The Freedom Institute, a nonprofit program in Naples that supports homeschooling with a traditional curriculum for students 9-12 grades.
The institute opened last August and is now up to 50 students.
DeSantis was welcomed by one of the school’s founding board members, Naples attorney Tom Grady, who said the school’s existence is possible because of expanded school choice options and removal of financial restrictions that the governor signed into law last year.
The governor spoke freely for 20 minutes about reforms he championed to a receptive audience of about 50 parents, students and supporters of the Freedom Institute. There also was a question and answer session with Grady.
The institute does not accept public taxpayer support; tuition is $8,400 a year, said Chris Marker, whose title is chief learning officer. He previously spent 10 years as principal of Lake Park Elementary and was principal of Naples Park Elementary School last year. He homeschooled his son.
The governor highlighted what the state has done to embrace educational choices for parents and key was removing financial restrictions that previously prevented lower income families from enrolling their children in schools like the Freedom institute or charter schools.
“We have close to 400,000 students on private scholarships now throughout the state of Florida as result of HB1 (last year),” he said. “We’ve quadrupled the number in five years. We also have almost 400,000 students in charter schools, which are public schools but they are not controlled by the school district or more importantly, influenced by the school unions.”
He spoke about how the state has spent billions to improve teacher salaries and how another “big push” on that front will be coming out of the state budget. The Legislative session ends March 8.
Here are some other key points of his talk:
Alternative education for students who are not college bound through workforce education in areas such as aviation mechanics, welding and other trades. The state is now training 600 commercial drivers a year.
College tuition has not gone up in the last 10 years and now Florida is the lowest state tuition in the U.S., he said.
Creating and providing a civics curriculum of 50 hours based on instruction from Hillsdale College where teachers receive a $3,000 bonus for completing it.
On economics, he talked about keeping the state budget being rated No. 1 out of the 50 states by CNBC and how the state has the lowest number of state employees per capita.
Banning environmental, social and corporate governance, ESG, investment practices from the state pension program.
He spoke about the rise of critical race theory, CRT, after the murder of George Floyd and broader delegitimization of the country’s founding principles and how the state banned CRT from K-12 education.
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