Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday hosted a training session for school board members across the state, showcasing his commitment to championing parental rights and keeping woke ideology out of Sunshine State classrooms.
The event took place in Orlando, Florida, on Monday and featured conservative school board candidates, as well as the governor, who touted the “Freedom Blueprint”:
“For too long, these school boards have not reflected the values of the communities that they were supposedly elected to serve,” DeSantis said during the event.
The governor’s reelection campaign originally introduced the “Students First, Protecting Parents’ Rights” education blueprint over the summer, which contained ten central focus points. It included rejecting indoctrination, supporting “robust” civics education, increasing teacher pay, keeping schools open, ensuring parental rights in education, guaranteeing curriculum transparency, and more.
During the event, DeSantis, per the Capitolist, called for paycheck protection for Sunshine State teachers, which “seeks to block automatic deduction of union dues from teacher’s paychecks,” per the outlet.
“We don’t want to play a role in deducting anybody’s money, so you write [your check] every month for the dues and you do it that way,” DeSantis said.
“It’s more of a guarantee that the money is actually going to go to teachers and not be frittered away by interest groups who get involved in the school system,” he added, also touting his wife’s successful Mamas For DeSantis initiative, mobilizing 1.1 million moms in support of the governor ahead of the election, which saw DeSantis besting Democrat Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) by roughly 1.5 million votes:
“We ended up with 1.1 million mamas signed up. We included grandmas in that too,” DeSantis said.
“You have to, because we’re in Florida. So it wasn’t as if it was 1.1 million that all had kids in school right now, but it was 1.1 million mamas who were signing up because they cared about these issues affecting our school system,” he added.
DeSantis endorsed over two dozen school board members across the state prior to the midterm elections, and several major school boards were flipped, including the Sarasota County School Board, Clay County School Board, Duval County School Board,Miami-Dade School Board, and Martin County School Board.
