Top Three Takeaways – May 23rd, 2021
- Do we finally care enough to do something about our school boards? While I’ve heard from numerous concerned parents regarding the School District of Palm Beach County’s recent policy announcement to engage in the dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating under-represented voices, sharing power, recognizing and eliminating bias, and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes... the flood gates have opened after it made national news when Fox News covered it. It’s my hope this is the capitulation point in which all residents, not just parents, get involved to take back our education establishments in South Florida. As I point out in today's Q&A, we have problems with accountability throughout our local school districts with Broward and Palm Beach County being especially problematic. To me this is a similar version of a different thing to what we fixed with elections in Broward and Palm Beach Counties. We were able to at least temporality fix our elections in both counties, though we can never let our guard down, as Peter Antonacci told me as he left Broward’s post as supervisor of elections, and now it’s time for the same with our school districts. This means numerous and highly engaged citizens, not just parents (as we all pay for these districts regardless) at every meeting. This means being active between meetings and in the community. This means running great candidates in school board races. In the meantime...
- DeSantis does. On Friday when the concerns of critical race theory being advanced under a different name in our schools was brought up to Governor DeSantis he made clear what he intends to do saying: You can put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig. If we have to play whack a mole all over the state stopping this critical race theory, we will do it. It’s offensive to the taxpayer that they would be asked to fund critical race theory. That they would ask to fund teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other. We’ll be taking action. Don’t you worry. And look, this is great. But we have to do our part too by not solely relying on DeSantis coming to the rescue as a crutch. Staying with the election's example. Rick Scott started and Ron DeSantis finished what was needed to restore election integrity to Broward and Palm Beach County. Voters did their part in retaining Wendy Link in Palm Beach County and here’s to hoping Joe Scott is an honest and competent supervisor in Broward. Anyway, it’s great that we have a governor willing to take on these important issues but it’s incumbent on us to stop electing these problems in the first place.
- Do your part to make a difference. I commonly hear from parents that they don’t feel like their school board is accountable to them. That’s largely our fault because we haven’t made them accountable. Also, don’t bank on local news outlets to make it happen for you either. They’re all more interested in access than they are accountability. That’s why while national news outlets are covering the attempt to back door CRT in our local schools, local news outlets are generally only covering school mask policies. Which, I’ll point out, outspoken parents and concerned citizens made progress in Broward, Dade & PBC school districts over what all stated a few weeks ago for the upcoming school year. It can be done. This is on all of us. I address ideas for a path forward into today’s Q&A.
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