Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to oppose local school board candidates, including Republicans, who support the teaching of critical race theory in the state’s public schools.
“We’re not going to support any Republican candidate for school board who supports critical race theory in all 67 counties or who supports mandatory masking of schoolchildren,” DeSantis told Fox News this weekend.
DeSantis’s announcement comes as the State Board of Education is set to vote on a proposal that would ban teaching critical race theory or any other curriculum that teaches America’s founding as anything “other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”
If the ban passes, teachers would also be forbidden from sharing “their personal views” or attempting “to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”
“Next week, I have my commissioner on education going to the board of education banning it — banning any departure from accurate history and following our standards. This is something that we’ve got to stay on the forefront of,” DeSantis explained.
Critical race theory must also be fought at the local level, DeSantis said.
“Local elections matter. We are going to get the Florida political apparatus involved so we can make sure there’s not a single school board member who ever indulges critical race theory,” DeSantis said.
Nearly a dozen other states, including Rhode Island, Idaho, and Texas, have moved to ban the teaching of critical race theory, which conservatives have blasted as “divisive” and “Marxist” propaganda.
“You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig,” DeSantis said last month. “If we have to play whack-a-mole all over the state stopping this critical race theory, we will do it.”
“Critical Race Theory is basically teaching people to hate our country, hate each other,” he continued. “It’s divisive, and it’s basically an identity politics version of Marxism.”
