Following his so-so results with school board endorsements during the primary election in August, Gov. Ron these campaigns hadn’t drawn as much of his attention because he had “so much other stuff going on.”

DeSantis endorsed 23 candidates and watched 11 lose, six win, and six have their fate on hold until this week. Tuesday, four runoffs went in favor of DeSantis endorsees, with wins in Brevard, Miami-Dade, Volusia, and Lee counties.

In all, DeSantis watched 13 of his 23 endorsements lose, while 10 won — eleven counting his less-formal endorsement of Laurie Cox in Leon County, who won in August against Democratic-endorsed candidate Jeremy Rogers.

Eight-year member Matt Susin won reelection to the Brevard County School Board, fending off Ava Taylor with a margin of nearly 20%. He previously served as chair of the board, which remains fully conservative, .

DeSantis-endorsed Donna Brosemer challenged incumbent Carl Persis to win a seat on the Volusia County School Board. Brosemer finished with 58% of the vote to Persis’ 41%.

Vanessa Chaviano, a DeSantis endorsee running for an open seat on the Lee County School Board, beat Sheridan Chester with 69% of the vote to Chester’s 30%, with nearly 300,000 votes cast.

DeSantis’ endorsement was not enough for Stacy Geier to claim an open seat on the Pinellas County School Board; she lost to Katie Blaxberg, a . Geier held a 2% edge on Blaxberg in the August primary, although the general favored Blaxberg by more than 4%.

DeSantis endorsee and Air Force veteran Mark Cioffi lost his bid for the Hernando County School Board. He lost to Michelle Bonczek by nearly 10% in the general, despite earning 44% of votes to Bonczek’s 28.8% in the primary, which prompted the runoff.

Democratic endorsements both lose

Two of the Democratic Party’s 11 school board endorsements faced runoffs Tuesday. Of the 11 the party backed, seven won in August. Facing runoffs were Max Tuchman in Miami-Dade and Stephanie Arguello in Seminole County.

Tuchman, a tech entrepreneur, lost in a big way to incumbent and DeSantis endorsee Mary Blanco, who earned 67.88% of votes — 86,151 to Tuchman’s 40,773. Blanco was appointed to the board a year ago by DeSantis.

Arguello, a public health PhD student, lost to incumbent and chair of the board Abby Sanchez by nearly 6%. Sanchez earned 52.95% of votes, or 114,630 votes to Arguello’s 101,842.

‘Other stuff’

The “other stuff” DeSantis alluded to included Amendment 3, which would have legalized recreational use of marijuana, and Amendment 4, which would have guaranteed a right to an abortion in the Florida Constitution. Both fell just short of the 60% voter approval threshold.

The governor, the First Lady, and other GOP officials paraded around the state campaigning against the two amendments in the weeks between two major hurricanes and Election Day. Some said the outcomes of the amendments could be a major mark on the governor’s record, for better or worse, if he chooses to pursue the White House again.

Nonpartisan school board elections will remain, as voters rejected Amendment 1 Tuesday, which would have printed candidates’ political party affiliations next to their names on the ballot. The races will remain nonpartisan on paper, although partisan endorsements likely will not stop any time soon.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

But 15 months later, the superintendent in Gainesville was after the district defied Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s ban on school mask mandates. DeSantis appointed a board member who tipped the majority 3-2 against her. She was the district’s sixth leader in close to a decade.

“My district will have a hard time explaining the turnover rate of superintendents and convincing the right person to pull up roots and move to our community,” she said. “The governor’s culture war has impacted the work environment so negatively that a school superintendent would be working to push back a very strong current of low morale.”

Far from being an isolated incident, her termination is part of a COVID wave of superintendent firings from the to . The charged atmosphere is a sign of the times, as toxic national and state politics filter down to local school districts.

A recent poll showed a clear decline in parents’ opinions toward their local schools. Those on both sides of the culture war have turned out in force at school board meetings — sometimes calling for superintendents to. But the issues have not been limited to closed schools or classroom controversies. Even run-of-the-mill decisions, like renovating buildings or replacing staff, have toppled careers. With alarming national test scores released Monday and pandemic relief funds running out in two years, the temperature is only likely to increase.

“We’re about to hit a different level of vitriol,” said Julia Rafal-Baer, co-founder of ILO Group, a consulting firm that helps future district chiefs find jobs. “We’re asking our leaders to be a sponge for divisiveness.”

‘Taking a risk’

The job of leading school systems has always been tricky. As they navigate complex bureaucracies and clashing constituencies from parents to teachers unions, superintendents are paid well (average salaries are in the ) but frequently burn out.

What’s changing, according to Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, is that now “we’re seeing a whole range of issues migrate into districts that in the past were somewhat buffered.”

Recent and point to a general increase in superintendent turnover, but none has directly examined the spike in terminations. In conversations with district leaders and their advocates, however, many say the phenomenon is inescapable.

Kevin Brown, executive director of the 3,800-member Texas Association of School Administrators, said in his 31 years in the profession, he’s never seen more superintendents fired than he has in the past two years. And Steve McCammon, executive director of the National Superintendents Roundtable, a 100-member network, said it’s becoming common for members to be fired “without cause” — legal language that allows school boards to part ways with their chief executives without offering a reason, a hearing or other elements of due process. Previously, he recalled only one instance in the past 20 years. 

“The stories are out there all over the place,” he said. “Everything has become a political decision.”

To get a sense of the scope of the issue, ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ reviewed news clips detailing nearly 40 no-cause firings or forced resignations in 26 states since the beginning of the pandemic. ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ also sent an informal survey to leadership networks, including the National Superintendents Roundtable, the Council of Great City Schools, Chiefs for Change, ILO Group and Education Counsel, another consulting organization. Out of 70 superintendents who responded, 15 said they’ve seen several district leaders fired or forced to resign since the pandemic began. Twenty said there have been many more. Nineteen worry they might be next.

“The role of the superintendent has become a punching bag … during the pandemic and the attacks are personal,” one wrote. 

Another said: “I have board members running to remove me, and I run a very strong and high-performing school district. It is a dark and sad time for superintendents.”

As in Alachua, debates over polarizing issues preceded firings in dozens of school systems across the country. 

Snapshot

A COVID Wave of Fired Superintendents

When school boards fire their leaders, it is seldom done with transparency. Payouts to superintendents and non-disclosure agreements typically mean the public doesn’t get the full story. The map reflects a sample of school superintendents fired — primarily without cause — since the start of the pandemic.

When conservatives took over the board in Spotsylvania, Virginia, last January, they , who was set to step down just five months later. The district was embroiled in debates over books with LGBTQ themes, with some board members calling for not only banning, but burning, library books they deemed “sexually explicit.” After banning several books, the district after a public outcry. 

In 2021, Kevin Purnell of Oregon’s was among a for simply complying with the law — in this case, a state mandate that students wear masks. The terminations prompted lawmakers to pass this year that protects superintendents from being removed for following laws. 

The perception that schools prolonged closures to protect teachers rather than serve students fueled a huge backlash from parents. Dozens of parents’ rights groups have sprung up since 2020, and Republicans have seized on the issue as a critical plank for upcoming midterm elections.

“School leadership failed students and catered to union agendas during the pandemic,” said Sharon McKeeman, founder of Let Them Breathe, which sued unsuccessfully over California’s mask mandate. McKeeman, who’s also in the Carlsbad Unified district, told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ that “it’s time for leadership that will put students’ needs first and help them recoup the learning loss and social-emotional damage they incurred during school closures and COVID restrictions.”

Part of the problem in tracking the issue is that such firings are typically shrouded in secrecy. For ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, Rafal-Baer of ILO Group analyzed the departures of 210 chiefs who vacated their positions in the nation’s 11 were fired. But based on news coverage, she suspects many more were forced to resign. Superintendents fired without cause often and agreements for everyone involved not to discuss the terms.

“We never hear the real story,” she said. “They legally can’t talk.” 

Issues over district management 

But Cheryl Watson-Harris, fired in April from her post as superintendent of the DeKalb County schools in metro Atlanta, refused to go quietly.

Her termination capped off a two-week media storm following the posting of a that exposed mold, crumbling ceilings and other safety hazards at the district’s oldest school. High school students shot the video after the board voted not to renovate the facility — an action she . 

Even before she walked into the job, Watson-Harris knew the district had a reputation for turmoil. Before they hired her, board members named former New York City schools Chancellor Rudy Crew as the sole finalist for the job, only to vote against hiring him two weeks later. for discrimination based on age and race, and the board later paid out a $750,000 settlement. Rafal-Baer of ILO Group said she even advised another candidate not to pursue the position.

Nonetheless, Watson-Harris, who previously served as second-in-charge under former New York City Chancellor Richard Carranza, hoped her status as an outsider would help her rise above the district’s troubled politics. It didn’t take long for controversy to find her.

She proposed that would require top deputies to reapply for their jobs in an effort to address what she felt was a lack of accountability over school improvement. She the district’s chief operating officer last year, according to local news reports, after an investigation found he bullied other employees and drank too much alcohol at a work conference. He , arguing that he was falsely accused of “a handful of minor violations” and that she retaliated against him for raising questions about accounting irregularities. 

In an interview, Watson-Harris acknowledged “spotty recordkeeping” in the district, one reason she brought in outside evaluators to review finances and was upgrading outdated systems for managing staff and operations.

The former employee died in a car accident in September near Detroit, according to police reports. His attorney declined to comment on the status of his lawsuit.

Board Chair Vickie Turner declined to answer questions about Watson-Harris’s termination. The other three board members who voted to fire her, along with the school district’s attorney, did not respond to requests for comment. 

“When you’re dealing with personnel matters such as this, you have to be very, very careful,” Turner said. “I don’t think it would be wise to speak to that, because we may have some things that are still not closed.” 

Watson-Harris’s firing shocked many in the community, even drawing a from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, who said the board chose “politics over students, families and educators.”

With just a month left in the school year, the board spent $25,000 to without her signature. 

“I could have closed out [the school year] and given people some stability,” Watson-Harris said.

Because she was fired without cause, Watson-Harris believes she was denied a chance to respond to the accusations against her. For that reason, she said, she’s refused to accept a $325,000 severance package and is considering legal action. 

After watching the district go through four leaders in three years, state Superintendent Richard Woods finds the volatility troubling.

“You cannot get any continuity of services and support,” he told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, adding that consistent leadership is needed to “have some forward growth.”

‘In the spotlight’ 

Such churn is becoming commonplace. In her review of the nation’s 500 largest school districts, Rafal-Baer found more than 20 have had two leadership changes since COVID’s arrival. 

Watson-Harris was both hired and fired during the pandemic. So was Florida’s Simon, who said she faced similar resistance from a board reluctant to challenge the status quo.

Alachua board member Tina Certain, who voted against Simon’s termination, said the former superintendent’s and creation of a teacher advisory committee that included non-union members likely contributed to discontent. 

“Every department I looked at had financial efficiency issues and basic management concerns — lots of ‘this is how we do things around here’ excuses,” Simon said.

That issue came to the fore when she raised questions about the that runs outdoor education programs. She found that scholarships meant for poor students were being awarded to those without financial need, including the child of a former superintendent on a six-figure salary. She — and shared with ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ â€” a text message between the camp’s director and a former staff member about scholarships given as a “thank you for being business partners.” 

An internal investigation of wrongdoing, but the district continues to push for of the camp. The director filed a against Simon, the district and the former camp staffer. He denied the allegations and said he didn’t violate policies because there weren’t any in place. His attorney didn’t respond to requests for comment.

But for DeSantis, it would appear that Simon’s vocal opposition to his COVID policies was the tipping point. “She went on the national news and put us in the spotlight in a very negative way,” Mildred Russell, the DeSantis appointee who cast the deciding vote to fire Simon, told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ.

Simon now leads that backs board members and superintendents who push for equity and inclusion. She doubts she could find another superintendent job in the state. 

“I think every board in K-12 or higher education would be taking a risk of being in DeSantis’s crosshairs in the event they consider my employment,” she said. “We are asking for people to risk financial and professional stability.” 

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

DeSantis — who is setting the GOP’s agenda on education policy and is widely seen as a potential 2024 presidential contender — expanded his reach into nonpartisan school board elections this year, 30 candidates in 18 districts. The majority won their races or have moved to a November runoff. Several of the governor’s candidates were also backed by the conservative organization Moms for Liberty, a parents’ rights group, and the , which has spent over $2 million on school board races in several states.

The charged atmosphere nationally is producing leadership candidates who aren’t seasoned or politically astute enough to withstand the pressure, said Daniel Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association.

“There’s no time to learn,” he said. “You’re going into battle now.” 

That’s why Alachua is holding off on looking for a new superintendent, said Certain, the board member.

“We’re not going to get anybody who is worth anything at this point because of the turnover,” she said.

At a hosted by the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, DeSantis pointed to recent dismal national test scores as vindication for his decision to fully reopen schools in the fall of 2020. He touted his parental rights agenda and defended his opposition to mask mandates and quarantines for children who weren’t sick.

“The way different places handled COVID is going to reverberate in terms of the educational outcomes for these kids for quite some time,” he said. “We got the big issues right. Unfortunately, a lot of places around the country got the big issues wrong.”

The event coincided with the release of a new , which ranks Florida as first in the nation for school choice, transparency on education and the extent to which it keeps “overburdensome” regulations to a minimum. But as with recent appearances in and , the events also offered an opportunity to position DeSantis, who is running for reelection against Democrat Charlie Crist, as a potential national candidate. 

“You can stand for regular people, and we can beat these elites,” he said, acknowledging the “blowback” he faced from teachers unions for requiring schools to be open five days a week. “I’ll take the arrows. That’s what a leader does.”

In the , DeSantis has at least a 5 percentage point lead over Crist. Critics say his policies defy Republicans’ preference for local control, and he’s facing a federal lawsuit over a new law that limits what teachers and college professors can say about race and gender in the classroom. 

DeSantis-backed school board candidates picked up seats across Florida in last month’s primary. But Corey DeAngelis, a speaker at the event and a senior fellow at the conservative American Federation for Children, said the anti-union message resonates beyond Florida.

He pointed to the defeat of nine out of 10 in the Republican primary who were backed by the Tennessee Education Association. 

“Coming out against parental rights in education is becoming a form of political suicide,” he said, citing Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s statement in last year’s Virginia governor’s race that he didn’t think “parents should be telling schools what to teach.” Many observers link that comment to his defeat by Republican Glenn Youngkin.

‘Political games’

McAuliffe during that campaign for having American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten join him at a rally. But that hasn’t stopped some Democratic candidates from giving the teachers unions even more visibility this year. 

In Florida, Crist chose United Teachers of Dade President as his running mate. And in Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, in a tight race against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz for a Senate seat, said if he wins, would be to the teachers unions.

Democrats are divided over whether President Joe Biden’s could lift their chances at the polls in November. But some, like Nevada incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, running against Republican Adam Laxalt, on passage of the American Rescue Plan, which included $122 billion for K-12. 

Heather Harding, executive director of the Campaign for Our Shared Future, is among those trying to redirect the conversation on education away from culture wars. Funded by organizations that , the nonprofit is organizing parents and educators to counter conservative activist groups like Moms for Liberty.

“Many politicians across the country are manufacturing controversies and outrage for their own personal gain,” Harding said in an email, without naming DeSantis specifically. “Their political games are hurting our children’s education and futures.”

The left-leaning Network for Public Education issued its own earlier this year, ranking states on their “resistance to the privatization of public education.” Nebraska and North Dakota, which have neither voucher programs nor charter school laws, both received an A+.

By contrast, the Heritage Foundation’s new tool measures education policies that matter most to conservatives. States received more points if they support alternative teacher licensing programs and dropped Common Core standards. They ranked lower, however, if they have a lot of districts with diversity officers, which according to their , “provide political support and organization to one side of the debate over the contentious issues of race and opportunity.”

The report card builds on earlier efforts — from groups like and the conservative — to identify states with more choice-friendly features at a time when the movement to give families more options has picked up momentum.

Arizona, which came in second in the report card, recently opened up its to any family. Proponents of expanded choice want to see public education funds “follow the child” into whatever school, public or private, the parent chooses.

“If you like your public school, you can keep your public school,” DeAngelis said, offering a twist on the motto former President Barack Obama used to promote the Affordable Care Act. “I think we’re going to look back in a couple of decades … and think it was just absolutely ridiculous that we forced families to take their kids’ education dollars to residentially assigned government-run institutions.” 

Unofficial results show 19 of the 30 candidates he endorsed won their races. Six others are headed to runoffs in the general election on Nov. 8 and five were defeated.

“Women with kids are the swing vote in Florida,” said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida. DeSantis, she added, was “brilliant” in waiting until early voting was over Sunday to on behalf of his candidates. “He knows that the majority of Republicans are going to vote on Election Day.”

The majority of the governor’s favored candidates won in counties that voted for former President Trump in 2020, but some also picked up seats in Democratic strongholds. 

“We’re excited about the boards we flipped that now have a majority of parents’ rights members,” said Tina Descovich, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a growing conservative organization that, like DeSantis, is opposed to schools’ attention to LGBTQ rights and social justice issues. “Parents know their children the best.”

In Miami-Dade, the state’s largest district, DeSantis-backed Monica Colucci, an educator who worked in the governor’s administration, defeated longtime incumbent Marta Perez. And Roberto Alonso, who founded an ed tech company and owns an adult day care, beat two other candidates, including Maribel Balbin, who was endorsed by the teachers union.

Balbin said she didn’t want Alonso to “walk into a seat without at least having a challenge of some sort.”

In Duval County, which includes Jacksonville, April Carney — who was part of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — beat incumbent Elizabeth Andersen, a licensed mental health therapist. Carney, one of DeSantis’s candidates, has not confirmed whether she was at the Capitol that day.

“I’m concerned for our teachers and students,” Andersen told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. She rejected political endorsements because she didn’t want the race to be partisan. “This level of political involvement by the governor in a local race is unprecedented and un-American.” 

The primary was a chance to gauge how voters would respond to DeSantis’s anti-”woke” education agenda. 

DeSantis has made a cornerstone of his re-election campaign. In November, he’ll face U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, a Democrat and former governor who released his of school board preferences. But some education advocates viewed the endorsements from both candidates as unwelcome intrusion into nonpartisan races.

“Parents don’t like it,” said Melissa Erickson, executive director of the Alliance for Public Schools — an advocacy organization focusing on districts along the I-4 corridor, from Tampa (Hillsborough County) to Daytona Beach (Volusia County). “They want school board meetings to be boring again.”

In Hillsborough County, where Crist’s and DeSantis’s candidates went head-to-head, Erickson saw less of an impact. Incumbent Stacy Hahn, endorsed by DeSantis, was reelected, as was incumbent Karen Perez, who picked up Crist’s endorsement. Another DeSantis candidate, Patricia Rendon won an open seat. 

“Two incumbents are going back to the school board. People are voting for who they know,” Erickson said. “Nobody massively outperformed their demographic.” 

‘A one-size-fits-all’ agenda

DeSantis unveiled his initial in June. After Crist announced his preferred candidates in July, DeSantis expanded his list to cover 18 districts. 

To earn the governor’s support, candidates had to complete a survey and commit to furthering his 10-point , which includes keeping “woke gender ideology out of schools” and rejecting critical race theory in the curriculum.

Andersen, in Duval, said the pledge runs counter to the principle of local control in education. 

“To me that’s a one-size-fit-all education agenda,” she said. “We are not the same as Hillsborough or Miami. We want to make decisions that work for our schools and our kids.”

But she represents a more conservative, mostly white part of the county. Carney won 53% of the vote.

With the Florida governor expected to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024, the question is whether his education platform translates outside of Florida as well. He recently took his message to Arizona, Pennsylvania and Ohio, for Republican candidates. Republican Doug Mastriano, running for Pennsylvania governor, said he wanted to make his state the

“Many people have moved to Florida because of what we’ve done,” said Alysha Legge, who lost to incumbent Perez in Hillsborough. She pointed to above-average and keeping schools open during the pandemic as reasons contributing to the state’s growth. “I honestly would love for him to stay in Florida. We need him a little longer.”

and changing demographics have shifted the state in a . Part of that growth includes an influx of Cubans. While they tend to lean more Republican, , some experts on Florida politics said that doesn’t mean they are as far to the right as DeSantis and former President Donald Trump. 

​​”Hispanics are more in the center. They’re trying to figure out what U.S. politics are all about,” said Marcos Vilar, executive director of , a nonprofit that has worked to get Hispanic candidates elected to school boards. 

Vilar was more focused on races in Orange County, which has a large Hispanic population. DeSantis didn’t endorse anyone in those races, but there were still contests between conservative and more liberal candidates. 

, incumbents Teresa Jacobs and Angie Gallo fended off conservative challengers, but Alicia Farrant, part of Moms for Liberty, will face Michael Daniels in a runoff. Many of DeSantis’s picks also received backing from the , a conservative group focused on removing any influence of critical race theory over K-12 curriculum.

In Manatee County, just south of the Tampa area, Sean Conley challenged DeSantis-backed incumbent Chad Choate. Although he’s a Republican — supporting for-profit charter schools, tighter security and fiscal responsibility — Conley said he knew it would be difficult to win. Even the chairman of the local Republican party got involved in the race. urging members in an Aug.18 email to be “laser-focused” on winning the seats for DeSantis’s candidates. 

Rev. James Golden, another Manatee County board member who ran for re-election is a local leader in the Democratic party. But he said he has “scrupulously” avoided partisanship in his role as a board member. 

With voters last fall renewing a for the school district, Golden thought that was a good sign they would vote him in for another term. But challenger Richard Tatem earned just enough votes to avoid a runoff.

The governor, Golden said, is “tearing down the fundamental premise behind public education.” Teachers, he added, shouldn’t have to worry about “whose mama is a Democrat and whose daddy is a Republican.”

Democratic gubernatorial primary candidate and U.S. Congressman Charlie Crist launched an education-focused policy platform entitled “Freedom to Learn” Tuesday, harping back to his experience with Florida’s public school system and bashing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education views.

“I told you, I’m a public school kid,” Crist said at a Tuesday press conference in Tampa, previously stating that he attended St. Petersburg High School and ultimately was elected Florida Education Commissioner as a Republican in 2000. He was also a Republican governor and Attorney General before becoming a Democrat.

“My father was on the Pinellas County School Board. Two of my three sisters were public school teachers. I graduated from one of our great state universities (Florida State University),” Crist said. “It’s in my DNA.”

While Crist flaunted his connection to Florida public schools, many of his comments were directed towards DeSantis’ handling of the state’s education system, including criticizing low-level teacher pay on average and efforts to limit classrooms discussions on race and LGBTQ+ matters.

DeSantis says that his administrations education policies focus on “education, not indoctrination” claiming that there is a push to include so-called “woke,” meaning more progressive, curriculum into public schools.

“The conditions are not good. The pay is not right. Everything is wrong under Wrong Ron,” Crist said.

Among the crowd was Brevard County School Board member Jennifer Jenkins, , along with several other contenders.

Crist said that the first step to getting “on the right track” was to “take care of him,” meaning unseating DeSantis as Florida governor in the 2022 gubernatorial elections. Keep in mind that Crist would have to win the primary in August.

He then laid out some of his policy plans for education, such as investing “5.5 billion to increase teacher pay.”

The Florida Legislature has designated millions into increasing teacher pay over the past three fiscal years at the request of Gov. DeSantis, with a majority of the funding going towards raising the starting teacher salary to 

But the Florida Education Association, , argues that DeSantis’ pay increases have not done enough to raise the salaries of experienced veteran teachers.

Crist referenced this complaint during the Tuesday press conference, saying that “his (DeSantis’) salary compression leaves veteran teachers out to dry.”

(National Education Association research shows Florida’s average teacher pay at $51,009, ranking 48th in the nation, based on 2020-21 data.)

Crist also wants to make some changes as to how teachers receive healthcare options.

“We’re going to give districts the option of joining the state (health) plan and we’ll even pick up the tab — on one condition, however. Districts will have to take all of the money they currently spend on that — on their health plan, letting the state do it — and turn it into higher salaries for educators and non-instructional staff,” he said.

He said that teacher unions would have a role in determining the specifics.

“Now, this is an important point: I don’t want Tallahassee dictating how it’s done. You get into the nuts and bolts, that’s important. And so, I want that option to be between the district and the union — to solidify your strength,” he said.

Crist also suggested he would reinstate the Commissioner of Education as an elected position, rather than appointed. Florida Democratic lawmakers  during the 2022 legislative session, but the bill did not gain traction in the GOP-controlled legislature.

“I’m the last elected education commissioner in Florida history,” Crist said, who served as the top state education official in early 2000’s. “I think they ought to be elected again, don’t you? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

His education platforms includes other policy goals, such as raising per-student spending in the state budget — the NEA data show a per-student figure of $10,703 for Florida, ranking 44th in the nation — and recovering from academic learning loss due in part to the COVID pandemic.

While he did not reference or attack his main primary opponent, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, he did remind the crowd of the “important” Democratic primaries occurring on Aug. 23.

“Don’t anybody forget about it. Make sure you vote. Tell all your friends to vote,” he said, still not mentioning Fried.

Fried has some similar education policy positions, according to her , including raising teacher pay and per-student spending. She also wants to expand programs such as Florida Bright Futures Scholarships and technical and trade schools.

Fried has criticized DeSantis’ handling of Florida’s school systems, particularly during COVID-19 and subsequent  and 

When the Florida Department of Education removed resources for bullied LGBTQ+ students from its website, Fried had the Florida Department of Agriculture fill in the info gap by .

The governor told reporters that he doesn’t foresee any new mandates being in place anytime soon, despite COVID surges and the highly transmissible omicron variant spreading across Florida and elsewhere.

 â€œTo impose  any type of mandate on people is crazy,” DeSantis said. “Schools in Georgia and North Carolina are closed, which is absurd. Have we not learned anything people?” he said.

DeSantis made the remarks at a Jan. 5 press conference, announcing funding to support infrastructure and job growth.

But the focus became COVID.

DeSantis encouraged Floridians to continue to test and ensured that home tests from the Biden administration will be sent out soon.

The first people to receive the home tests will be the senior citizens of Florida, so they won’t have to worry about waiting in long lines for COVID testing, the governor said. 

Meanwhile, DeSantis claimed that the omicron variant is “more like the flu” and if teachers and students aren’t feeling well, to simply stay home.

According to the Miami Herald,  thousands of teachers are calling out sick in Miami Dade public schools, raising concerns for educators, families and Florida residents. 

Based on  Jan. 4 data reported over a seven-day period (Dec. 28-Jan. 3), COVID cases rose to infections  in Florida, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That’s the second highest of all states and the District of Columbia. Coming in first is New York, which includes cases from New York City and New York State combined.

Overall, Florida’s COVID-cases added up to 4.36 million — lower only than Texas and California.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

A new Florida Assessment of Student Thinking, which the state legislature still needs to approve, would involve three “progress monitoring” tests spread throughout the school year. DeSantis called the plan the “final step to eradicate Common Core from our assessments.”

Last year, the state dropped Common Core standards, which many Republicans associate with the Obama administration, and is phasing in . To comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act and receive federal funds, however, the state would still have to test all students in reading and math, produce end-of-year results and share the data with parents.

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The “announcement feels like somebody trying to make a point with teachers and parents, but the devil is in the details,” said Paige Kowalski, executive vice president of the Data Quality Campaign, a nonprofit that focuses on making education data clear to parents.

The governor’s announcement comes amid growing anti-testing sentiment and complaints from educators that testing takes too long, often offering unhelpful results after students have moved on to the next gradel. With state tests cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic, teachers have also been relying more on programs such as NWEA’s MAP assessments to gauge how the pandemic has impacted students’ progress. Federal law doesn’t require states to test in the spring, and under an existing , some states, such as Georgia, are already trying interim tests throughout the year to minimize emphasis on end-of-year exams.

But experts say there are downsides.

“If they take the current test and cut it into three pieces, spreading it out over the year, it’s perhaps not that big a deal,” said Dale Chu, a senior visiting fellow with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank. “But if schools didn’t like the ‘high-stakes’ nature of annual testing, they’ll be in for a rude awakening when the pressure’s on three times a year.”

Kowalski added that districts might not want to give up “benchmark” tests, such as MAP, Renaissance Learning’s Star or Curriculum Associates’s i-Ready, because teachers find them useful. If the new Florida Assessment of Student Thinking — or FAST tests — are layered on top of those, schools could find themselves giving more tests throughout the year instead of less.

Another possibility is that districts might stop paying for MAP or a similar test, leaving teachers with fewer data points to know if their “kids are on track,” Kowalski said.

Testing all students once a year in two core subjects sounds like a simple charge, she added.

‘But we haven’t been able to nail it,” she said. “How are we going to approach an innovative assessment system that you need a chart to explain?”

Patricia Levesque, executive director of Foundation for Florida’s Future — part of the Foundation for Excellence in Education launched by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — raised about the plan. One is whether teachers would be required to teach on Tallahassee’s timetable in order to be prepared for the three statewide tests and another is whether the spring test would simply replace the end-of-year test, giving teachers “less time to cover the full year of content.”

The testing program DeSantis is ending was a centerpiece of Bush’s two terms as governor.

DeSantis’s proposal applies to standardized tests for English language arts and math, but doesn’t eliminate high school end-of-course tests in algebra, U.S. history and biology.

Teachers unions , and Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho — even though he’s been at odds with DeSantis over his ban on universal masking in schools — the move.

Chu noted that even though the U.S. Department of Education required states to give tests this year, officials have allowed considerable flexibility with COVID-19 continuing to disrupt learning. Some states were allowed to delay spring assessments until this fall, the District of Columbia hasn’t conducted state tests for two years, and California allowed districts to choose which tests to administer.

“In today’s environment,” he said, “it’s hard to see the feds pushing back that hard.”

They pride themselves on their allegiance to a moral code, a firm compass that distinguishes them from progressives who are always — allegedly — trying to erode the core principles that make America great.

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Which is why it’s so tragicomic to witness conservative state leaders in , , , , and beyond search for some shred of principled moral reasoning to justify their mandates forbidding school districts from requiring masks on their campuses.

It’s a tough task, since most of conservatives’ usual lines just don’t fit. They certainly can’t justify their actions in the name of American federalism and local control of schools. It’s hard to squash local school boards’ abilities to determine whether or not students and staff must wear masks … in the name of local control. determining the masking rules for every locale in his state, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott explained that “Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices.”

Nor can conservatives shield themselves in the name of protecting personal responsibility. If the last 18 months have taught Americans anything, it’s that the cautious also suffer when their feckless, carefree neighbors ignore the pandemic’s risks. Which, by the way, is also why they’ve shelved their “pro-life” rhetoric for this particular debate.

So conservative leaders have made a desperate grab for the banner of individual freedom. For instance, in his executive order limiting districts’ pandemic mitigation efforts, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis insisted he was acting to “protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.” That is, masks can’t be required at school during a still-raging pandemic because that would disempower families from choosing what’s best for their children and, presumably, teachers from managing their own tolerance for risking infection.

But this is a profound distortion of America’s traditional approach to freedom. about how virtuous behavior and personal responsibility were fundamental to sustaining individual liberty. It was obvious to them that the stability of America’s limited, representative government rested upon individuals behaving responsibly. “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,” George Washington wrote in his Farewell Address. And, when it’s politically convenient, modern conservatives know this. “Freedom relies on virtue for its survival,” announced . Its authors continued: “It is virtuous citizens taking personal responsibility for their actions and exercising mutual responsibility for the welfare of others who make ordered liberty possible.”

In his towering 1859 essay, “On Liberty,” English philosopher John Stuart Mill, articulated his “harm principle,” one of that tradition’s famous definitions of individual freedom. “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will,” Mill wrote, “is to prevent harm to others.” The gist of the principle should be intuitive — indeed, to most Americans. It’s the intellectual ancestor of : my freedom to swing my fist ends precisely at the point where it hits your nose.

In that vein, then, the case for curtailing families’ liberty to send their children unmasked hinges upon whether or not this will cause harm to others. This is not a complicated calculation.

To be sure, throughout the pandemic, it has been both tempting and fashionable to claim that the coronavirus is not particularly threatening for children. Further, advocates from across the political spectrum have made a series of cavalier claims about the relative safety of school settings. Last March, Brown University economist and prominent school reopening advocate Emily Oster , “Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma.” In his executive order as proof that school masking was unnecessary.

However, much of the confident talk about the safety of school reopening comes from earlier moments in the pandemic when fewer children were being tested and attending in-person schooling. As in-person school reopening launches across the country, there is that children are to catching the Delta variant than previous strains of the coronavirus. It’s driving , perhaps because those under the age of 12 are still not yet eligible to receive any of the coronavirus vaccines. it increases the risk of hospitalization for people of all ages.

Data on the latest pandemic spike suggest that these concerns are warranted. Pediatric hospitals — — . Test positivity rates for school-aged children . That is, more of the kids being tested for COVID are testing positive. an overall as the baseline threshold for when it is safe for governments to reopen in general. Perhaps we might tolerate a slightly higher rate for school reopenings, but Florida’s positivity rate for kids is four times the WHO’s benchmark: in that state, . Meanwhile, over 98 percent of Americans live in counties .

Finally, in elementary schools with universal masking and widespread COVID testing, that nearly one-quarter of students will be infected in the first three months of school. Remove students’ masks, and their models suggest that nearly 80 percent of an elementary school’s students will be infected in the same time frame. These CDC models are looking gloomily prescient: as Georgia schools near the end of their first month since reopening, the state’s Department of Public Health reports that . Gwinnett County Public Schools, just outside Atlanta, by the end of the school year, and possibly more if case rates increase with colder weather — despite requiring masks at all times on campus.

In such an environment, at such a precarious moment for public health, the application of Mill’s harm principle is relatively straightforward. The new variant of the virus is already threatening the health of children and families, and it will threaten more if schools reopen without mitigation measures in place. Universal masking is just the simplest, easiest and cheapest of these. Political and education leaders are absolutely justified in taking all of the standard approaches to slowing the spread of the coronavirus — including mandatory masking, vaccine mandates and strict quarantine protocols for schools with new COVID cases.

Notably, as the Delta variant began taking hold of campuses around the country, even Prof. Oster and Brown University took touting Gov. DeSantis’ citation of her research .

That conservatives are abandoning their prior moral convictions to explain their behavior makes clear that the whole effort to “protect the freedom” of the recklessly unmasked is really about scoring political points in a moment of enormous peril for children, families and the country. Indeed, in the face of school districts’ opposition to his executive order, to families determined to send their children to schools unmasked. Note, of course, that this extension of freedom, in the form of “empowering families,” doesn’t isolate the risks only to the private schools willing to tolerate these unmasked families’ choice. It simply provides the virus with more vectors to transmit, threatening everyone in Florida — and the rest of the country.

Worst of all, it’s not even the first time that conservatives have tried to use the virus as leverage for attacking public schools and educators. Last summer, then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that would allow parents to enroll in private schools willing to open into the teeth of .

To be fair, modern conservatives’ brand of radical individualism is taken into account elsewhere in the Western intellectual canon. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that this rugged freedom was something like humans’ natural state … each of us fending for ourselves and charting our own life courses. Famously, however, he warned that this was incompatible with civil society, for in this state of nature, life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Dr. Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. Find him on Twitter . The views expressed here are his alone. 

“Everyone is waiting for someone else to blink, and I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for parents and principals,” said Julia Martin, legislative director at Brustein and Manasevit, a law firm specializing in education.

On Friday, the state board sent the Broward County and Alachua County school districts in Florida a letter saying they were out of compliance with a health department order that requires districts to allow parents to opt out of having their children wear masks. The state gave the districts 48 hours to either comply or turn over the salary figures for school board members who voted for a mask mandate.

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“We don’t believe we have done anything inappropriate,” Broward County school board President Rosalind Osgood said Tuesday, adding that the district is seeking “legal avenues that we can challenge those things that we believe are unlawful and out of line.”

Broward’s detailed response pointed to the circumstances in which a student would not have to wear a mask and did not provide salary information.

Alachua County Public Schools Superintendent Carlee Simon’s letter listed salaries, but also stressed that the district was in compliance with the health order. She said the number of positive COVID-19 cases is “growing every day.”

The Miami-Dade County Public School is among the in the state requiring masks for students, but the district has not yet received a similar letter, a spokeswoman said.

The responses from Broward and Alachua were the latest move in a three-way chess game involving several Florida districts, DeSantis and President Joe Biden. The administration has said the districts can use federal relief funds to cover any salary costs that the state withholds and that parents can file civil rights complaints if they think a ban on universal masking means their child is missing out on learning. U.S Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona suggested in a Sunday on “Meet the Press” that the department doesn’t plan to withhold funds from Florida or any other state banning local mask mandates because it “adds insult to injury to these students who are trying to get into the classroom.” But in a letter last week to North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, ranking Republican on the House education committee, he said states standing in the way of districts “adopting science-based strategies” are infringing on districts’ ability to follow federal law.

Martin added that using the civil rights route is a slow process that could drag out for months. The virus might be less of a threat by the time an investigation is complete.

On Monday, over DeSantis’s mask order went before a circuit court judge in Leon County, where pro-mask parents argue local school boards have the authority to set their own policies while the attorneys for the state say districts are out of compliance with a parents’ “bill of rights.”

In her letter, Foxx asked whether districts had to require masks to receive relief funds. Florida is among the states that have not yet submitted a proposal for how it would use American Rescue Plan funds for K-12. Arizona, another state banning universal masking, has submitted its plan, but the department has not yet approved it. The department released $81 billion to the states in the spring — two-thirds of the relief funds — and requires states to submit a plan to receive the remaining third.

Richie Taylor, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Education, said the notes the June 30 state law banning districts from mandating masks, but that the state “has not yet received feedback.” Since the state submitted its plan, Gov. Doug Ducey has launched an , using federal relief funds, that awards an additional $1,800 per student to districts without mask bans. But the said the state can’t use the relief funds to discourage districts from following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

In Florida, education department spokesman Brett Tubbs said he was unaware of any discussions over whether the mask controversy could impact approval of the state’s plan, once it’s submitted. “It will be interesting to see how it plays out,” he said.

The department has already approved plans from other states with bans on universal masking — Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. But officials have a couple options if they decide not to approve Florida’s or Arizona’s, Martin said.

They could say that the states’ plans don’t adequately consider CDC guidance, or that the state is not considering feedback from parents and school employees who want everyone to wear masks. A Quinnipiac University released Tuesday finds 54 percent of Floridians think schools should require masks.

What’s tricky, Martin said, is that the rule regarding the relief funds was written in April before the Delta variant sparked another wave of positive cases and increased hospitalizations.

“We’ve gotten into a situation where all the documentation was in the spring,” Martin said, “and we have a very changed landscape now.”

Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday it would be possible for federal relief funds to cover salaries if the governor follows through on withholding pay from superintendents and board members who require students to wear masks.

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“We’re looking at a range of options,” she said, adding that any action the administration takes could impact the “handful of states that are putting in place measures that make it more difficult for … leaders in the education field to protect students and their communities.”

But DeSantis shot back, saying it would be inappropriate for the administration to intervene.

“I think that they really believe government should rule over the parents’ decisions,” he said during a . “The parents are in the best position to know what’s best for their kids.”

DeSantis, the White House and school officials in districts such as Broward County and Miami-Dade are taking firmer stands on the issue as the state’s COVID-19 positivity rates and hospitalizations .

Florida’s brinkmanship on masks comes as districts across the country are feeling the impact of the more aggressive Delta variant and the pandemic once again is interfering with what parents and officials hoped would be a typical back-to-school season. Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona even raised the possibility of a return to remote learning.

“[If] the community spread gets to a certain level, it may be best to have students learning from home,” he said during a Friday town hall in Boston with the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Clubs. “But we’re going to do everything in our power not to go there. The kids suffered enough.”

Some Florida district leaders say they’re not intimidated by the governor’s threats and argue they have a duty to require masks temporarily.

“I have a moral responsibility to be my brother’s and sister’s keeper, even if it means my salary is taken away,” Rosalind Osgood, chair of the Broward County school board, said Tuesday during a special meeting where members voted to keep the mask mandate in place. “I wonder if the governor has visited the ICU lately.”

The vote came after more than an hour of passionate arguments from parents and staff members on both sides of the issue.

“We’re really lucky that we have such a simple way to protect each other — by wearing a simple cloth mask over our face,” one mother, with her kindergarten daughter on her hip, told the board. “You have an entire community behind you.”

Another mother said the board is infringing on her right to make decisions that affect her child.

“My child does not want to wear a mask,” she told the board. “If the masks were working, why is my child having to be quarantined from exposure so many times?”

Meanwhile officials in Miami-Dade County Public Schools are still weighing their decision on mask rules, and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said he’ll listen to the advice of health experts.

“At no point shall I allow my decision to be influenced by a threat to my paycheck; a small price to pay considering the gravity of this issue and the potential impact to the health and well-being of our students and dedicated employees,” he said in a statement.

‘Keep schools open’

Florida is one of eight states not allowing local flexibility regarding mask mandates, according to Burbio’s . Those who disagree with the governor’s position have taken different approaches to the issue.

Some are maintaining that they still have a mask mandate in place, but are allowing parents to opt out. In , it’s sufficient for parents to make the request. But in Alachua County, which includes Gainesville, a doctor’s note is required.

“I’ve been called a monster, child-abuser, communist, fascist, idiot and other names not fit to print. I’ve been threatened with legal action, protests, militia ‘enforcement’ and worse,” Alachua Superintendent Carlee Simon wrote in Monday about her decision to require masks for the first two weeks of school, which began Tuesday. “Certainly we’re concerned about the threat of lost funding, but it shouldn’t come to that. After all, we want what DeSantis wants: to keep schools open and our kids in the classroom.”

Simon noted that the state its Hope Scholarship voucher program to include those who prefer a school requiring masks. The program previously only applied to students who have been bullied, harassed or assaulted, allowing them to transfer to another private or public school. Broward County board members said that new rule only hurts public schools if more families opt to go private.

Some parents think DeSantis is making the right call.

“The silver lining of COVID is that it doesn’t impact kids,” said Bill Gilles, who has two children in the St. Johns County School District, which includes St. Augustine. The district is complying with the governor’s order.

Children represent less than 10 percent of COVID-19 cases internationally, according to the .

Gilles said he and his wife were more accepting of masks last school year before vaccines were available. But now, young people more likely to become infected are the “bar crowd and not the school-age crowd,” he said. “It just doesn’t justify putting burdens on kids.”

According to the state health department’s data, are 14 percent among children under 12 and 20 percent for 12- to 19-year-olds. About 1 in every 100,000 children in Florida, 17 and under, has been hospitalized for COVID-19, which is roughly double the last peak at .56 per 100,000 in January, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But DeSantis said in his comments Tuesday that RSV, a common respiratory infection, is contributing to increased hospitalization rates.

In June, the CDC noted that RSV cases were and that the state has a longer season of the infection than others.

‘The worsening situation’

Nationally, the majority of states are leaving the decision about masks up to local officials, and for some parents in districts where masks aren’t mandated, that’s a problem.

“Our preference is for our kids to be in person, but for everyone to wear a mask,” said Alan Seelinger, a parent of three children in Georgia’s Cobb County School District. Unlike other metro Atlanta districts, Cobb does not require masks and is no longer taking students’ temperatures or asking about COVID-19 symptoms.

A week into the new school year, however, nearly 1,500 cases have across the metro area.

“It is regrettable that this pandemic was ever politicized, so we simply ask that you employ a data- and science-driven approach in light of the worsening situation we are seeing today,” the Seelingers wrote in their letter to the board last week, sharing a Bible verse about looking out “for the interests of others.”

Seelinger, who has two children who still aren’t old enough for vaccines, would like to see the district renew the option for virtual learning. While the district still allows remote learning, parents had to make the choice at the end of last school year.

Parents in the county who want masks at the district office on Thursday.

“Kids have a right to a safe school, and right now Cobb schools aren’t safe,” Seelinger said.

Opinions about masks largely fall along partisan lines, with more than three-fourths of Democrats in a recent saying they’ll put on a mask in public all or most of the time, compared to less than 40 percent of Republicans.

In California, one of nine states currently with a mask mandate for schools, the issue surfaced in a recent debate among leading Republican candidates vying to unseat Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in a September recall election. All four candidates participating in the debate mask mandates.

The Delta variant, however, has been enough to change some Republican’s minds. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has said he regrets signing a law in April banning mask mandates. He has tried to change the legislation, but lawmakers have declined to revisit the issue. On Friday, a judge temporarily blocked the law, to require masks.

“I can only hope in my heart this is what happens to Gov DeSantis,” Broward County board member Nora Rupert said Tuesday.