Florida govt has hired several anti-mask and anti-gay theorists for the purpose of banning books from the school curriculum & it has raised questions.
Citing “curriculum transparency”, the Republican party-controlled state government of Florida has appointed MAGA (Make America Great Again) activists, who are anti-mask and anti-gay theorists, to ban books from children’s curricula.
The staffing of the agency was suspicious, as the Education Department sidelined its own decision while hiring the activists for the censorship council, The Daily Beast reported. The said council is expected to re-train the public school librarians to adhere to the newly-imposed restrictions. This is the latest move in Gov. Ron DeSantis’s government to significantly change the school system.
Republicans had secret coordination with the State’s Education Department?
The said council of Republican activists was recruited per a memorandum issued on August 12 from the Department of Education Senior Chancellor Jacob Oliva. As per the memo, the local school districts had to nominate “parents of students in K-12 schools to be represented on the workgroup”. The workgroup would then train librarians to work as per new censorship laws. However, the process of hiring the activists was questioned, because the government hired right-wing activists who have had a history of banning books.
A man, who had close ties with the DeSantis administration, was nominated almost a week before the recruitment was publically announced. In another case, the Department of Education overlooked almost 100 potentially eligible members and five applicants,
including former elementary school assistant principal, the director of Eastern Florida State College’s tutoring centers, and the administrator of a local scholarship fund to recruit a woman who nominated herself- Michelle Beaver, the report added. Beaver has been actively demanding a ban on books.
Justifying the move, Wilton Simpson, Florida state Republican Senate Leader said, “While teachers, school administrators, and school board members have a tremendous amount of authority over what and how our kids are taught in school, at the end of the day,
parents-not schools-are responsible for raising children”. At Democracy Forward, which managed to obtain the government emails, Megan Uzzell said: “It calls into question the process that the Florida State Board of Education is trying to implement. It raises significant transparency questions”.
