The Florida legislature will gavel into session Tuesday with an ambitious agenda that includes a number of education reform bills, including one that expands the state’s rules on teaching gender identity and sexual orientation in grade schools.
Spearheaded by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), the 2023 legislative session in the Sunshine State promises to be a repeat of sorts of the 2022 session that saw the Republican-controlled state legislature pass several education-related bills, including the infamous Parental Rights in Education Act that was dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by Democratic politicians and liberal pundits due to its provision barring classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation before fourth grade.
DESANTIS PLANNING PRODUCTIVE LEGISLATIVE SESSION IN FLORIDA AS 2024 LOOMS
Now, with a new supermajority in the legislature and a governor fresh off a double-digit electoral romp, Florida Republicans are poised to build upon the 2022 session by expanding prohibitions for classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity so students are not exposed to the topics before high school. The legislature also plans to take up bills that would add Florida to a growing list of states with universal school choice programs, ban diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, departments in Florida universities, and give university boards of trustees more power to fire tenured faculty.
For DeSantis, the session provides an opportunity to further champion a conservative governing agenda ahead of an expected campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Jessica Anderson, the executive director for Heritage Action, touted the “historic education initiatives” and said DeSantis and the Florida legislature’s agenda could serve as a blueprint for other states to follow.
“Gov. DeSantis’s bold legislative agenda will build on Florida’s leadership to strengthen parental rights, keep the Left’s radical gender ideology out of classrooms, and expand education freedom for families across the state,” Anderson told the Washington Examiner. “Thanks to Gov. DeSantis’s leadership, all eyes are on Florida as a leader in the education freedom and parental rights movement.”
School choice
Filed as HB 1, universal school choice is poised to come to Florida as the proposed expansion to the state’s school choice program, which would allow students and families to use public funds to pay for private school tuition and other education-related expenses. Utah and Iowa have already enacted similar programs this year, joining Arizona and West Virginia as the first states to enact universal school choice.
Higher education
HB 999 is DeSantis’s signature higher education reform bill that he proposed at a press conference in January. The major provision of the bill is the elimination of DEI departments at Florida’s public universities. Universities are also barred from requiring diversity statements in hiring.
“We are … going to eliminate all DEI and [critical race theory] bureaucracies in the state of Florida — no funding, and that will wither on the vine,” DeSantis said at the January press conference. “That’s very important because it really serves as an ideological filter, a political filter … people want to see true academics, and they want to get rid of some of the political window dressing.”
The bill would also allow university boards of trustees to initiate post-tenure reviews for tenured faculty at any time and would give university presidents wider latitude in hiring new faculty members.
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Prohibiting classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation
The expansion of last year’s Parental Rights in Education Act would prohibit classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity before high school. The 2022 law currently only bans it before fourth grade. The bill also prohibits schools from requiring teachers and staff to address students by pronouns that do not correspond to the student’s biological sex.
The 2022 parental rights law drew national outrage, including from the Walt Disney Company, which vowed to fight for its overturn. DeSantis and the legislature responded by stripping the company of special privileges that allowed it to essentially self-govern the area in and around Disney World.
