Photo: Getty Images North America
Q&A Of The Day – How Can Local School Boards Defy Florida Law? Part 1
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email:brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Parler & Twitter: @brianmuddradio
Today’s entry: Good Morning, The School Board voted to break the law and remove our parental rights. How can they do this? How is it that the school board can override the law? I don't understand how this is possible. As a parent I am furious. I shouldn't be put in this position when a law was made for parents and I shouldn't be putting children in this position. I am already withdrawing one child from other reasons...I have 2 others.
What kind of example does this set for children? Students have to follow all School Board policies or they get punished but the School Board doesn't have to follow State Law? Where is their punishment? So it's ok for them to not follow law but under no circumstances should a student not follow policy...dress code, behavior, etc. This is a horrible example to set for a district that enforces punishment for the slightest break of policy for students.
I am trying not to rush to pull my other 2 kids out and hope that the Governor will punish them severely but I doubt that will happen. The timing on this is perfect. I am sure they knew how they were going to vote before the meeting. The 10-day head count for funding is Tuesday. That only gives us parents Friday, the weekend, and Monday to make arrangements to pull our kids out of public school.
I know you have nothing to do with their decision or the schools but I thought you'd like to hear from a parent who woke up to the news today that our own school district voted to break the law and remove my parental rights (which how do they trump state law????)
Bottom Line: I hear you and understand your frustration. Yesterday, I discussed FAU’s findings that by a margin of 51% to 40% Floridians support parental choice for school mask policy, as opposed to school mask mandates. Five years ago, 71% of Floridians voted for Florida’s Amendment 2, which “legalized” medical marijuana in Florida. You might be wondering what one has to do with the other and why I’d reference the medical marijuana amendment in conjunction with rouge school boards. The background of the medical marijuana amendment contains the same answer to your school board question. And in fact, what we’re discussing right now is exactly what I warned about back in 2016 regarding the precedent we’d set if we were to pass the amendment. While I personally support the option for one to obtain medical marijuana, I voted against the 2016 amendment on principled grounds.
As I explained at the time, there’s a right and a wrong way to do things. Marijuana in all forms, was and still is, a schedule 1 drug according to the federal government. Thus, it was and still is illegal in all forms. Yet it’s been “legally” sold in Florida for years because of our state sanctioning of it. The right way of pursing the legalization would be for the advocation of our federal representatives to legalize the product. Instead, over 70% of Floridians decided the state of Florida would break federal law. The Supremacy Clause in the Constitution ensures that state and local governments can’t enact laws which contradict federal law. Yet we did it. And because the federal government has chosen to look the other way, though they could at any time take punitive action against the state and shutdown all related operations, the industry has proliferated in the years since. What’s happening in real-time, with Alachua, Broward, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County School Districts deliberately breaking state law, by defying the Florida Board of Education’s policy for the current school year in addition to Florida’s parental bill of rights, is simply a different version of a similar thing. And as I also warned at the time, once governments start going rogue and defying law it’s a slippery slope. Once one government breaks the law and gets away with it, it emboldens others to do the same when they disagree with the law of a superior government. For those who supported the medical marijuana amendment and also support parental choice, this is a teachable moment. In the second part of today’s Q&A I’ll address some of the contextual elements of your concerns.