Student chair and desk in classroom. (Photo by Catherine McQueen/Getty Images)
Florida schools removed books at record rates; university presidents left under the gun, and ostensibly nonpartisan elections featured partisan endorsements during a year in which our Republican-dominated state Legislature and a governor seeking to remake the education system shared the driver’s seat in Tallahassee.
Here is the Phoenix list of top education storylines from 2024:
Church in public schools
In February, the Phoenix detailed how about a dozen states, Florida included, contemplated welcoming chaplains in public schools.
FL may copy a Texas law bringing chaplains to public schools, despite First Amendment concerns
In the spring, the Legislature voted (89-25 in the House and 29-12 in the Senate) to allow religious chaplains to provide counseling in the schools with parental consent. DeSantis signed the bill in April.
Pushback came from the ACLU, the Council of Florida Churches, and other organizations arguing the measure violated the First Amendment’s disfavor of state establishment of religion and created an environment for religious coercion and indoctrination.
No school districts initially signaled interest in the voluntary program — although Miami-Dade County took a step toward voting on the program bit in the end has not. The Marion County School Board voted against allowing chaplains this month and Osceola County voted against chaplains twice, most recently in September.
While the program has yet to put chaplains in front of students in Florida, the new law escalated discourse around government and religion and put on record some Republicans’ vision for how those two interact.
The Department of Education defined “religion” and “chaplain” in a letter to school districts offering model policy for implementing the voluntary program.
The Satanic Temple pushed back against the department’s model policy, including its definition of “religion,” as too narrow, arguing it would exclude Satanists, Buddhists, Humanists, Jains, Confucianists, and “many others.”
The department argued the policy would “ensure that credible chaplains can volunteer in Florida schools.”
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State adjusts book removal policies, lawsuits play out
The Legislature and DeSantis toggled with a law permitting Floridians to challenge public school library materials deemed inappropriate after districts faced a high volume of book challenges from community members.
HB 1285 was a response to a 2022 law that opened the ability to object to these materials. The 2024 law limits nonparent residents of a county to one objection per month. But the DeSantis administration seemed to blame the law’s opponents rather than parents’-rights advocates who by far issued the most challenges.
“Anyone who creates a cottage industry of going around the state and just creating challenges just to gunk up the system and put schools in arrears as far as reviewing these books, that person won’t be able to do it anymore,” Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said during a news conference in April.
Then-Senate President Kathleen Passidomo conceded people “overdid it” on book challenges.
The 2022 law continued racking up headlines in 2024 as schools and the state face lawsuits that are still playing out.
This month, a federal judge advised the Escambia County School Board to settle a book removal lawsuit, the USA Today Network-Florida reported. According to the report, the school has paid attorneys more than $640,000 to defend against lawsuits.
In August, book publishers and authors of some of the most-removed books filed suit, arguing the state’s interpretation of “pornographic” and content that “describes sexual conduct” in the law is unconstitutional, overbroad, and has caused a chilling effect.
The Department of Education and PEN America released separate lists using different methodology detailing the number of books removed statewide in the 2023-2024 school year. According to the state, 732 titles were removed during the year. According to PEN America, the number is about 4,500 books.
Nonpartisan elections with partisan endorsements
In advance of the primary and general elections, DeSantis and the Florida Democratic Party rolled out school board candidate endorsements. Notably, the people vying for a school board spot do not formally adopt a political affiliation.
Amendment 1, placed by the Legislature on the November ballot, would have made school board races partisan, again — they’ve been nonpartisan since 1998, when voters approved a constitutional amendment to make it so.
Needing 60% voter approval, it drew just under 55%.
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried rallied against the amendment in August, saying that instead “we should all be focused on one thing only, teaching our children, making sure that we are creating an environment that is healthy for them.”
DeSantis endorsed 23 school board candidates in primary races. Eleven lost and six had their fate delayed until November. Four of those six won in the General Election.
The Democratic Party endorsed 17 candidates and won 10 races.
University presidents surrounded in controversy
Three Florida universities took steps to fill their top leadership spots, each entailing its own controversy.
Former University of Florida President Ben Sasse’s exit — citing his wife’s health problems — left state leaders calling for an audit into his spending and prompted the university’s trustees to tighten oversight of the presidential office’s hiring and spending.
Following his resignation, The Independent Florida Alligator first reported that Sasse spent $17.3 million in his first year as president, spending mostly on his former U.S. Senate staffers and their travel and on private consultants, tripling Sasse’s predecessor’s spending during his last year in office.
Following news of Sasse’s spending, lawmakers, the governor’s office, and Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis demanded accountability.
Florida Atlantic restarted its presidential search this year after officials called off the first attempt following a Board of Governors investigation that determined the search committee violated Florida’s Sunshine Law and state regulations.
Previously, as reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education, then-state Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican, said DeSantis had told him that he was a “shoo-in” for the FAU presidency. Days after Fine was not named as a finalist, the Board of Governors suspended the search and requested it be restarted.
At Florida A&M University, a botched $237 million donation preceded the resignation of President Larry Robinson.
During FAMU’s spring graduation ceremony, Texas hemp farmer Gregory Gerami announced “the money is in the bank,” the Tallahassee Democrat reported, referring to the donation, which would have been the largest gift to a historically black college or university in history.
A state-commissioned investigation concluded the donation was “fraudulent,” and blamed poor communication and a lack of understanding by FAMU leaders of private stock values. Robinson stepped down in July.
Since then, the Phoenix reported that a search consultant recommended FAMU seek a “business executive.” Additionally, officials voiced concern that potential search firms would not abide by the new state policy disfavoring consideration of diversity, equity, and inclusion in hiring. The result was to slow down selection of a search firm.
The overall trend is that the 12 state universities are coming under increased oversight from the Board of Governors, especially pertaining to presidential selections. The board gave itself permission in September to appoint two of its members to university search committees, an increase from the previous single appointee.
Also new, a search committee’s list of finalists must be approved by the Board of Governors chair before a university board of trustees can vote on it.
Students protest Israel, universities react
Florida’s college and university students started the academic year greeted by warnings from administrators and Attorney General Ashley Moody about how to express their views on campus.
Those warnings came after protests on campuses escalated in 2023 following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, and carried into 2024.
In April, the Phoenix was on the scene when lawn sprinklers dampened students in the area where pro-Palestinian students were calling for FSU to divest from companies with ties to Israel. The university told the Phoenix the sprinklers had been scheduled to turn on at that time.
Moody sent a letter to all 40 Florida public college and university presidents in August reminding them “of the zero-tolerance policy for antisemitism in the State of Florida.”
Trustees across the system imposed time, place, and manner restrictions on protests and encampments, barring use of amplified sound, indoor picketing, and other actions that one pro-Palestine protester told the Phoenix amounted to “targeted” and “absolutely political repression.”
University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues instructed university presidents to scan their syllabi for material deemed antisemitic or exhibiting “anti-Israel bias” in August, following concerns raised by Fine.
The concerns centered around a Florida International University course reportedly using a textbook that asked students, “When Israelis practice terrorism, they often refer to it as _____,” and, “In which country did the Zionists purchase land to create their new homeland?”
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