Florida’s Board of Education set to vote on proposal to ban critical race theory

The Florida teacher’s union is pushing back on the decision by Gov. Ron DeSantis to ban critical race theory in classrooms.

On Thursday, Florida’s Board of Education is set to vote on the proposed rule that would in effect ban critical race theory.

The subject fires up some parents and taxpayers.

And they speak up at school board meetings locally and around the state.

“Critical race theory focuses mainly on teaching cultural differences.”

“Critical race theory has no place here, plain and simple.”

Andrew Spar leads the state’s largest teachers union. He does not support the rule as it’s written.

Instead, the teachers union will submit its revisions to the rule during the meeting that includes discussions on the contributions of African-Americans, Latinos and women to the U.S.

“That is being used as a political football. Should we talk about race and what’s happened in this country over time? Yes,” Spar said.

For example, the proposed rule says teachers may not suppress or distort any significant events such as the Holocaust and may not define American History as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.

The teachers union, the Florida Education Association, wants to add historical events like slavery, reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement.

“The oppression of people, whether it was in Hitler’s Germany and Europe during World War Two, whether it was in this country during slavery, or during the civil rights era or the Jim Crow era, we should recognize that,” Spar said.

The proposed rule change also says teachers can’t “attempt to indoctrinate students.”

“Because it’s using a term, a political term, indoctrinate, it really is falsely maligning teachers in the work that they do,” Spar said.

And Spar believes that work is to teach students our country’s history, rooted in facts, absent in politics.