Ron DeSantis cameos at education board meeting; reopening order draws dissent

Gov. Ron DeSantis made a surprise appearance at a state Board of Education meeting Wednesday, taking the opportunity to assuage concerns about reopening schools.

The Department of Education has taken heat for ordering classrooms open next month, including from within the Board. The emergency order is creating confusion about whether schools can choose to stay closed, but school districts may close if their plan is approved by local health departments.

The Governor emphasized the need for classrooms to take in students for the benefit of their education and their parents’ livelihood.

“We’re in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic, but we’re also in a situation where we need to provide as many options to parents as possible in terms of the education of their kids,” DeSantis said.

Health experts, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have understood that children rarely develop severe COVID-19 cases. And the Governor pointed to recent suggestions that there is little virus spread in day cares as evidence that children rarely transmit the virus to adults.

School districts need to make special accommodations for at-risk employees and students, and parents should have the option to keep their child in virtual classes if they believe schools are unsafe, he added.

But after DeSantis left the meeting, one Board member, Michael Olenick, criticized Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran for signing what was effectively an administrative order without input from the Board of Education.

“With all due respect, this order should’ve been brought to the state Board of Education before it went out,” Olenick said. “We should’ve had the opportunity to discuss this. We didn’t.”

While Corcoran and other Board members touted the flexibility afforded schools by the executive order, Olenick insisted that requiring the Department of Health’s approval to close a school district ran contrary to flexibility and that some local health departments would likely deny some school districts’ requests.

“Please, Commissioner, the executive order was a good idea, but it wasn’t. It came out as an emergency order, it became to some degree political in many people’s eyes, so let’s backtrack on that brick and mortar and keep the rest of the order intact,” he added.

The member also noted the order came out hours after President Donald Trump tweeted that all schools must reopen in the fall.

“An emergency order was weeks in the offing,” Corcoran responded, sarcastically saying he had coordinated it with Trump. “I can’t control when or what the President tweets.”

While opening the Board’s discussion, DeSantis also touted the education achievements made during the Legislative Session, which included $400 million to raise the average base salary for new teachers and $100 million in pay raises for veteran teachers. The Governor approved those programs despite nixing a historic $1 billion from the state spending plan.

“We knew that it was going to require a significant financial commitment, but we really believed that it was the right thing to do, not only to reward teachers who were doing a good job, but also to continue to bring good people into the profession and ultimately benefit our students’ education.”

Despite Florida’s efforts to provide virtual learning for students, education experts and the Governor say children fell behind in learning.

“Heck, if you didn’t fall behind, we wouldn’t have worked so hard to get the teacher’s salary increases,” DeSantis quipped. “We believe that that teacher there is really significant to a child’s well-being.”