#education in florida

[writing-with-olive]

when you call your reps to ask them to pretty please stop taking away your rights, remember:

In deep red areas you're a republican who is thinking of voting for someone else if they don't vote what you want on this specific bill because it impacts your republican ideals so very much

In swing states you're an undecided voter who's gonna go blue if they don't vote how you like

remember to call because that way their phone is going off and their peers can hear it because their offices are close together (emails and letters don't work like that), so it can rattle them if they get high volumes. remember that you gotta make them feel like they're losing something.

[ncfcatalyst]

A Brief Overview of DeSantis' Education Reform

It’s no secret that Florida has become ground zero for conservative educational policy. Gov. Ron DeSantis has made countless headlines throughout the past year due to policies like the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, the Stop WOKE Act, book banning in K-12 schools and, most recently, the appointment of six new Board of Trustees (BOT) members at New College of Florida on Jan. 6, followed by a seventh…

[constantly-deactivated]

Polk County Florida Sheriff - "You kill a policeman it means no arrest...no Miranda rights...no negotiations...nothing but as many bullets as we can shoot into you...PERIOD."

POLK COUNTY FLORIDA SHERIFF, GRADY JUDD

man in Polk County , Florida , who got pulled over in a routine traffic stop, ended up "executing" the deputy who stopped him. The deputy was shot eight times, including once behind his right ear at close range. Another deputy was wounded and a police dog killed. A state-wide manhunt ensued.

The murderer was found hiding in a wooded area. As soon as he took a shot at the SWAT team, officers opened fire on him. They hit the guy 68 times.

Naturally, the liberal media went nuts and asked why they had to shoot the poor, undocumented immigrant 68 times.

Sheriff Grady Judd told the Orlando Sentinel: "Because that's all the ammunition we had." Now, is that just about the all-time greatest answer or what❓

The Coroner also reported that the man died of natural causes. When asked by a reporter how that could be, since there were 68 bullet wounds in his body, he simply replied: (BEST QUOTE ever) . . .."When you are shot 68 times you are naturally gonna die."

[thatdiva]

[mysharona1987]

So things in Florida are going well.

[reality-detective]

Sheriff Chitwood of Volusia County, Florida talks us through the Bodycam footage of Florida policeman rescuing a woman who was about to be r*ped by an illegal who just applied for "asylum."

These are the "asylum seekers" that Kamala Harris allowed to invade our country. 🤔

[bloghrexach]

WORD!!

@hrexach

[relaxedstyles]

[evanyaglad]

If you live in Florida, I made these educational spreadsheets regarding the new amendments coming up this year. I did my best to keep everything educational and unbiased. Remember to stay informed, open-minded, and to go VOTE!

[fru1typunch]

Here's a little post ranting about the Floridian education system and how it fucked over public school librarians this year, from the adult child of one who spent his whole summer helping his poor mom try and keep up with Desantis's ridiculous requests.

Every school year, the librarian always gets a couple weeks with a "closed" library to take inventory of the school's stock at the end. Normal stuff, y'know, if a bit tedious and boring. Scan every. Single. Thing. See what you have and figure out who last checked out what you should have, that sort of thing.

Well, Ron Desantis, in his genius, decided that concept had to be applied to all the books in the entire school to determine if they're "appropriate" (by his batshit conservative standards).

My mom didn't JUST have to do the usual inventory thing for her own library. She ALSO had to do something similar but far WORSE for her entire school's personal classroom libraries.

The objective of this SCHOOL WIDE requirement was to "approve" every book in the school as "appropriate". Every. Single. Book. In. The. School. Not the school library, no, the SCHOOL. All classrooms.

My mom's an elementary school librarian. There's around 1000 students at her school, give or take, and around 50 or so classroom libraries to sort through. And this was supposed to be done over summer, before the kids came back in the fall. Entirely unpaid.

She had to personally approve around 25,000-30,000 books school wide based on whether or not they're "appropriate for kids" (again, by Desantis standards), entirely unpaid, in about 2 months. Keep in mind these classroom libraries had been pre-existing for many years or even decades in most cases, so it's kinda useless to just now care about whether the books are "appropriate".

Mind you, you can't read that many individual books in under two months and then approve them in the system if you tried, even if most were children's books. She spent every single day of her summer, her only real time off each year, logging into the online portal and manually approving books from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, looking them up and trying to determine if they might be okay by the new standards since she couldn't possibly have the time to read them all and check, and again, entirely unpaid on her own. Teachers were scanning in their classroom's books to the system to be approved by her in real time, so she really never could get very far ahead. At most she'd knock out a few hundred a day, which I think is wildly impressive given the circumstances.

Even with all that work, she couldn't open her library for nearly a month into the new school year this August because she spent every school day finishing that approval thing for the classroom libraries for teachers. At least by that point she got paid for it. She was also way behind on getting her library ready for the school year, she really hadn't had time to prepare like normal. It was a crazy stressful time for her all around, moreso than back-to-school time normally is each year.

I helped as much as I knew how to, which mostly just meant looking books up for her or texting back and forth with my friends that work at Barnes and Noble or Books A Million asking if they could skim through certain books that might pose a threat at times, and coming up to the school with her sometimes while she worked on approving books and I worked on preparing her library for "business" again.

My mom was upset because she didn't have time for a real summer vacation, the most she got to do was occasionally visit the beach a few hours away for a day trip. (On one of the beach days, she even took her blessed laptop with her to work on it in the car ride over.) She was in the thick of it neck deep all on her own for months with hardly any time off and no pay to show for it.

It's frustrating because if she were to have approved a book that a parent later complains about, it could mean bad news for her. Again, no way in hell would she have been able to both read every single book, determine if she thought it was okay by Desantis's standards, and then approve every single book within the system. She did her best, but she's still nervous someone will complain.

All this conservative bullshit around books is hurting so many kinds of librarians and educators in so many ways, so just take a moment sometime soon to appreciate your local librarians and public school teachers putting up with this crap. They could use the love. Maybe some strong alcohol. And a big wad of cash, they do a lot of shit unpaid.

And do vote these assholes out of office that are making these poor librarians' and teachers' jobs harder with no additional support or pay.

[ralfmaximus]

Under the terms of the settlement, the Florida Board of Education will send instructions to every school district saying the Florida law doesn’t prohibit discussing LGBTQ+ people, nor prevent anti-bullying rules on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or disallow Gay-Straight Alliance groups. The settlement also spells out that the law is neutral — meaning what applies to LGBTQ+ people also applies to heterosexual people — and that it doesn’t apply to library books not being used in the classroom.

Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law has been defanged for the most part. Or at least, teachers & students cannot be officially prosecuted for the crime of being gay or talking about gender identity.

So, a small victory for Floridians. It's to be seen how well these new instructions will be followed in hardcore red districts, but that's always been the case.

MAGA assholes will, of course, be enraged.

[bearded-shepherd]

Huh...ya know, déjà vu am i right?

O WAIT

They tried to pull the same shit back in 2021-2022

These hogs are relentless lulw, they're really that scared of growing braincells.

Might as well dust off your .45 and shoot every child entering a school building or library cause fuck the future of this Country.

Sacrifice their lives with a bullet, child labor, child marriage, etc but so help me God my child picks up a book, have a consistent education, or decides to enroll in an AP course later for a better future.

[icestarphoenix]

Wanted to try drawing Florida as a Fundamental Paper Education character. Is he a student? Is he a teacher? Who knows, he's just there anyway.

Warning that FPE contains gore and blood if you're squeamish about that.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum at Popular Information:

In May 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed Florida House Bill 1069, a law that requires sex education classes in the state to conform to right-wing ideology. Specifically, the law requires all sex education classes to teach students that sex is binary, "either male or female," even though that is inaccurate. It also mandates that students are instructed that sex is defined exclusively by "internal and external genitalia present at birth," and these sex roles are "binary, stable, and unchangeable." This requirement erases the existence of trans and nonbinary people. Schools also must "teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students" and "the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage."

To enforce these new rules and other aspects of the DeSantis administration's political agenda, HB 1069 also requires "all materials used to teach reproductive health" to be approved in advance by the Florida Department of Education (FDE) or use textbooks pre-approved by the state. Previously, sex education curricula were approved by district school boards. Florida parents can opt-out of sex education lessons on behalf of their children. 

The FDE instructed school districts to submit their materials for sex education by September 30, 2023. The school districts met the deadline, but the FDE never responded. Florida counties were placed in a no-win situation as not teaching sex education, a mandatory course, at all is a violation of state law.  Several Florida school districts — including Hillsborough, Orange and Polk Counties, three of Florida's largest — decided not to teach sex education at all during the 2023-24 school year, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Other counties, including Broward and Seminole Counties, taught sex education classes without getting the legally required approval. 

The FDE has ignored requests for comment and public records requests seeking an explanation for the delay.  Now, a new school year is underway in Florida, and the FDE still has not approved any of the submitted sex education materials — or provided any response at all. Orange County hoped to make up for last school year's missed lessons when school started this August, "but now those plans are on hold."  Schools are reluctant to use the state's pre-approved texts because they are glaringly incomplete. For example, one textbook "preaches abstinence as the only effective way to prevent STDs and pregnancy and does not mention contraception." To avoid issues, the textbook advises students to "go on group dates rather than spend one-on-one time with a partner."

Popular Information takes a deep dive into why Florida students at several school districts aren’t being taught sex ed at all, even though it is a a mandatory course.

[mysharona1987]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/28/virginia-frequent-school-book-challenger-spotsylvania/

What a sad life this woman has. She literally challenges a new school book every week.

So she wants everyone under the age of 18 to never read about sex?

Dracula? Anne Frank’s Diary? The Catcher in the Rye? Of Mice and Men?

Jeez, she’d even ban the Sweet Valley High books. (Jessica was a total hoe and once set up her own twin sister to get date raped.)

She’s a nutjob on a power trip. And she needs a hobby.

[reality-detective]

Florida Surgeon General says a new Lancet study shows anyone who got the vaccine is more likely to contract Covid•19 than someone who did not get vaccinated. Will the CDC tell you this? No.