Politico reported that Florida school board members favored by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in the 2022 midterms had already begun pushing out woke teachers in counties in which the boards’ majorities swung Republican.
Following the success of his supporters, DeSantis remarked, “We will combat the woke in corporations, the woke in government agencies, and the woke in our schools. We will not ever, ever, give in to the awakened agenda. Florida is the state where the awake die.”
Moms for Liberty, a grassroots parental rights charity, worked alongside DeSantis to run successful midterm campaigning that resulted in a countrywide victory for pro-parent school board members.
According to Politico, new members of school boards in two Florida counties effectively dismissed superintendents in less than a week. In November, three superintendents were removed from their jobs.
“We had a wave in school systems that spit in the faces of parents,” Florida Republican Representative Randy Fine told the news source. “And now the folks who did that are no longer here.”
The new majority conservative education systems throughout the state are focusing on increasing transparency for parents and removing critical race theory as well as gender ideology from the classroom.
During a meeting in Broward County, five school board members supported by DeSantis voted to fire Superintendent Vickie Cartwright. Cartwright told WPLG that her firing had left her “shocked and startled.”
One week afterwards, Brevard County Superintendent Mark Mullins consented to retire in the face of rising pressure from the school board’s conservative majority.
“I am pleased with the contribution I have made to our children and their families over almost thirty years of service, and I respect and admire the thousands of Brevard Public Education employees who show up to work every day with the goal of serving our schoolchildren with greatness as the standard,” Mullins said in a statement to WKMG-TV just after his resignation announcement.
A local union, the Brevard Federation of Teachers, also endorsed Mullins’ decision to resign, claiming that his ineffective leadership had failed to stop a pattern of student aggression against teachers.
“Students physically and verbally attack educators and staff, and no end is in sight unless serious systemic changes are implemented,” the teachers union told Politico.
The Sarasota County School Board decided four to one last week to start severance discussions with Superintendent Brennan Asplen.
On Monday, Asplen responded to calls for his dismissal, saying, “I have accepted the reality that I’m going to soon be removed by the School Board, since a collaborative partnership does not seem to be possible.”
