Florida Board of Education comes to Miami, faces criticism and can't escape controversy

For the first time in seven years, Florida’s Board of Education held a meeting in Miami Wednesday at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Campus. 

These days, wherever the state Board of Education meets, some controversy is sure to follow. On Wednesday, the board ordered the Florida High School Athletic Association to use the word “sex” instead of “gender,” as part of a larger dispute with the federal government, which bars discrimination based on gender identity. That was just one item on the agenda.

The meeting started with the commissioner of education, Manny Diaz, bragging that U.S. News has ranked Florida first in the country for overall education outcomes, including K-12 and the university level. 

“They demonstrate that when we work together and set high expectations and focus on continued improvement, we can achieve extraordinary results,” Diaz said. 

He painted a positive picture of Florida’s public schools, a view not shared by those who gathered to make different points at a news conference before the meeting. 

“Florida now ranks an embarrassingly low 50th in the nation,” said Andrew Spar of the Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers union, speaking about average teacher salaries. 

The FEA blames the Board of Education, the governor, and the state legislature for creating a teacher shortage.

“They are passing policies from an ivory tower in Tallahassee and they don’t care about the impacts those decisions are having on our students and the people who work in our schools,” Spar said. 

Diaz praised Miami-Dade County Public Schools for providing a variety of choice and magnet programs, saying the district is an example for others to follow.

Lisette Fernandez has two kids in MDCPS schools. She came to the meeting to tell the board to stop promoting what she calls divisive culture war issues.

“They are steering our public education system down a dangerous path with their politicized agenda,” Fernandez said. 

For example, the board Wednesday approved a change to the social studies standards, inserting “ancient Jewish” civilization as a source for teaching the origins of the rule of law. 

“Last year I taught that the rule of law came from the Magna Carta and historical documents, this year, I’m teaching that the rule of law, self-responsibility and things like that come from Judeo-Christian values,” said Crystal Etienne, who teaches civics at West Homestead K-8 Center. “But there’s students who aren’t Christian or Jewish or don’t have that background and they’re questioning themselves, like if they don’t subscribe to that religion, are they still good people?”

Critics say the change also brings up constitutional issues. 

“And so bringing in Judeo-Christian values undermines the separation of church and state, it makes a narrow version of what children should be learning,” said Katie Blankenship of PEN America.

Blankenship spoke out against another policy change approved by the board, which she says will make book removals from schools more likely.

We tried to ask Diaz about these issues, but he decided not to take questions from the news media.