FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten visited South Florida Wednesday to denounce what she called an “attack on public education” by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
At Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, one of the schools she visited during her trip, Weingarten touted the school’s robotics program.
“We are seeing programs that work for kids,” Weingarten said. “What we need to do is lift all kids up. We don’t need to be dividing.”
That’s what she accuses the governor of doing, saying it’s all driven by political ambitions and culture wars. She pointed to the Miami-Dade School Board’s recent vote against recognizing LGBTQ History Month.
“The Miami-Dade board is now scared and so that’s why they did what they did,” Weingarten said.
It was a move even some school board members say was driven by the Parental Rights in Education law, known by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
But the governor says it’s all about the rights of parents, so they can decide what their children learn.
“They’re defunding the public schools,” Weingarten said. “They’re making it harder to teach honest history, voting rights, the New Deal.”
Union leaders say new laws have created an environment where people don’t want to be teachers, partly, they say, why districts are having a hard time recruiting.
“We see fear,” Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco said.
Fear and the loss of local control, they said. Especially in Broward, where the governor has now appointed the majority of the county’s school board following his suspension of elected officials after a scathing grand jury report that accused them of incompetence and neglect of duty.
“He replaced them with four Republican men who could never get elected in a county like Broward County,” Antonio White, the first vice president of United Teachers of Dade, said.