Tales From The State Board of Education Meeting
Florida gets a new education commissioner. Indian River County leads as scores are up across the board. In Hillsborough County, they are still fighting parents over pornographic library books.
At Miami Dade College, the alma mater of Indian River County school superintendent, Dr. David Moore, the State Board of Education held its annual meeting on Wednesday. At the meeting, the Board voted to replace outgoing Education Commissioner, Manny Diaz, who has taken a position as interim president of the University of West Florida. Diaz will be replaced by Governor DeSantis’ deputy chief of staff, Anastasios Kamoutsas, an architect of education policy in the administration. He was on the front line of many issues, and even served as Diaz’s chief of staff prior to joining the governor’s team. Attorney General, James Uthmeier wrote on X, “Stasi has been a conservative leader in all the education policy fights over the last 6 yrs. Reopening schools during Covid, protecting kids from unscientific masking, enshrining a Parent’s Bill of Rights, universal school choice, eliminating DEI/CRT—he’ll be a great Ed Commish.”
A superintendent invited to share how the school system has success
For those of us in Indian River County, the real stories from the State Board of Education meeting were the back to back presentations of Dr. David Moore followed by the Board’s investigation of Hillsborough School District’s refusal to remove pornographic books from their school libraries.
Pornographic materials are no longer a problem in Indian River, according to the state list from last year. Dr. Moore was all smiles, being at the State Board of Education by invitation. The Superintendent of the Year and leader responsible for the 'A' District, which contains 95% of district schools being an 'A' or a 'B' in performance, Dr. Moore was asked to provide an overview concerning Indian River schools. He focused on the district being a “complete choice” School District. Dr. Moore said, “Shortly after I arrived to Indian River, I asked the board to reconsider our boundaries by eliminating them. We are a complete, 100% choice district. One in 4 of our students are in a school of choice.”
He then shared how Indian River is a top-10 high-performance district. It is also the most improved district in the State of Florida, with a high school graduation rate of 96%. What he did not share was that reading and math assessments have risen too. Spring assessment scores show the district improved to a score of 69% - up 6 points - for 3rd grade level reading in English Language Arts. All grades improved in reading, especially in middle schools, where drop-offs have been customary. In 7th grade, scores were up 12 points over last year.
More significantly, Vero Beach Elementary improved from a 47% (second lowest) to 69% in one year. The facility is a Moonshot school, showing The Learning Alliance program finally improving on the scores from when they began in the district nearly 12 years ago. In addressing the Board of Education, Dr. Moore said, “What provides that level of success? A few key strategies. One key strategy is that we listen. We take the opportunity to engage our community and understand the needs of our parents.”
Dr. Moore described that the things parents wanted was to be able to choose schools and have Kindergarten through 8th grade facilities. He discussed the new Classical school, championed by board member Jackie Rosario since shortly after he arrived. He shared, “One of those four [K-8 schools] will be a classical model. We’ll be one of two districts in the state of Florida that will lead the way in providing a classical education in a public education environment … That school, though it hasn’t opened or transitioned into the classical school yet, right now, is on a waiting list,” adding, “Demand is there. We, as a public school system, have designed ourselves to meet that demand.”
Parents know best
Over in Hillsborough, simple demands of parents go unnoticed for the sake of politics. It was noted by The State Board of Education during the discussion about library books with Hillsborough superintendent, Van Ayres, that Hillsborough County has the largest homeschool population of any District. Hillsborough has significantly declining enrollment numbers too. Last year, they lost $18 million of funding to choice scholarships.
While most Districts eventually heard parents on the sexually explicit books, the Hillsborough board has delayed “for 4 years,” said parents who testified at the school board meeting on June 2nd. The Superintendent did nothing until the Attorney General sent a demand letter in May. He removed the 2 books requested by AG Uthmeier to be removed for "patently pornographic" content.
Yes, Hillsborough thought “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George Johnson, with its graphically written depictions of sodomy and other sexual activity, is the right of every child to read despite Florida’s obscenity statutes. In November 2021, Moms for Liberty Chair, Jennifer Pippin, discovered the book in SDIRC libraries after watching a mom from New Jersey read excerpts from it before a school board. It was the first book that was immediately removed by then Dean of Curriculum, Richard Myhre. Pippin challenged more books with just as much sexually graphic content as George Johnson’s novel.
After two years, the protests reached a boiling point in Indian River at an August 28, 2023, school board meeting. Parents and grandparents read excerpts from various titles. The “book banning pastor” from North Carolina, Rev. John Amanchukwu, attended the meeting. His podium time was cut short as he read an explicit passage. Not stopping, Board Chair, Peggy Jones, had his microphone turned off. Rev. Amanchukwu was escorted out by county deputies in a moment that went viral across the nation. It received over 20 million views. Locally, administrators were in shock as the school district was put in the national spotlight for originally ignoring the explicitly perverted content of the challenged books. In February 2022, the board voted 4-1 to return those books to the shelves after being told they were reviewed by media specialists. The lone holdout was Jackie Rosario, who was also a petitioner.
The School District of Indian River County could not ignore parents again. They had to listen.
Who is more important, media specialists or parents?
In response to the national spotlight, the SDIRC had suddenly learned to read and has removed all challenged books containing explicitly sexual content. It was a lesson Superintendent Ayres refused to realize. Required to face scrutiny, he testified to the State Board of Education that he looked at the two published lists of removed pornographic books by the FL Dept. of Education. He said, “In an abundance of caution, there is a state list that is published every year of books, that in previous years, have been objected to and removed by challenge. The 22-23 list and 23-24 list are currently unavailable to students until our process is completed, which is our review over the summer.”
A simple check of the list against the library catalogue of the school system shows multiple books still readily available that are on the state lists. Author, Ellen Hopkins’ book, Identical, which has been removed for graphic content throughout the state, is available in multiple Hillsborough high schools. So, is another title from the infamous author, Kobabe, who wrote the unavailable, but not removed, Gender Queer. His 2024 follow-up book, Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding, which is a book about transgender dressing to help others identify your gender correctly, is available.
There are stranger examples of Hillsborough’s haphazard review process. For example, Sarah J. Maas books, which are described by Jennifer Pippin of Moms for Liberty as “adult oriented sexually explicit romance novels,” are all available to check-out in Spanish language versions while the English versions await review. There are many others not accounted for in the lists. The Tampa Bay Times reports that Superintendent Ayres has asked media specialists to come in during the summer, paying extra time to review books. The extra cost to actually do their job requirements correctly, estimates from $345,000 to $500,000 depending on what school official you ask, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
State Board of Education members asked him about the media specialist process of review. The Hillsborough superintendent kept taking responsibility, yet, Board of Education members couldn’t quite grasp the idea of a second process for books that qualify as pornographic across the state. Member, Kelly Garcia, was mystified. After one member said, “it sounds like your review process is broken,” Garcia addressed Superintendent Ayres. “Have you considered firing all of your media specialists and starting from scratch with women and men who can read? Or, have a single shred of decency?” she asked. Then Garcia added, “Personally, these people that you trust to review these materials are abusing the children of your county. They are child abusers. I, as a 56-year-old mother of 5 and a physician, can’t look at these pages. I am incapable of looking at them…. The words jump out at me. I have to turn the page.”
The State Board of Education member, Ryan Petty, followed Garcia and asked him to read an excerpt from one of the books in the list before them. Visibly embarrassed, Ayres refused to do so. Petty pointed out to him the scene was the opening paragraph of the novel, A Stolen Life by Jaycee Lee Dugard. Nobody could bring themselves to read it.
It was noted by The Board of Education that since the Attorney General has established the Office of Parental Rights, school boards and school administrators can be held criminally responsible for making obscenity available to minors. Threatening criminal referral, the Board of Education gave Superintendent Ayres 2 weeks to remove the pornographic materials.
Hillsborough has other problems. All of their reading assessments fall below state averages. Third grade level or above is only 51% of students, according to the latest published scores. Math scores are also below state averages. With a $4.3 billion budget, the results are unacceptable.
In Indian River, an elementary school that once hovered around 55% attendance and would possibly be shut down, now has a waiting list of 7 families for its new classical school that will introduce its Kindergarten and 6th grade classes next year. Great start to an idea long championed by conservatives like Jackie Rosario. And most importantly, Dr. Moore is really trusting the parents, who are his most important advisors.