Retired teachers tout Democratic candidate seeking to counterprogram Moms for Liberty message

The Republican candidate in Palm Beach County’s House District 89 race is a teacher, but many retired public school teachers are boosting his Democratic opponent as the real supporter of education.

Groups like Moms for Liberty have raised alarms about purported child indoctrination, warnings that have also gotten the Governor’s ear.

But the former teachers supporting Democratic candidate Debra Tendrich are presenting a counternarrative, saying recent legislation that the parental rights group helped shape is weakening their ability to engage students in learning — and it’s hurting the quality of education teachers can offer.

“The decisions that are being made at the state level are impacting the kids and the teachers at a very visceral level, and the politicians don’t seem to understand why that’s important or why that would be,” said Debbie Tanner, a former library media specialist at a Delray Beach elementary school who retired years before she expected to last May.

They see a champion in Tendrich, a nonprofit executive who is in a race with private school teacher and Republican candidate Daniel Zapata to fill the HD 89 seat. Democratic Rep. David Silvers is barred from seeking another term to represent the central, inland Palm Beach County district.

The race has retiree Laurie Bendell getting involved in a campaign for the first time in her life. The 33-year teacher, who spent most of her years at S.D. Spady Elementary School in Delray Beach, is knocking on doors for Tendrich. Bendell wants Tendrich to be in Tallahassee to stop Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education agenda, which a supermajority of legislative Republicans support.

Bendell, who left her position at the end of last year ahead of plans to retire, offered a first-person account of the unease that has gripped the teachers’ room.

“At a faculty meeting, my principal was saying something like, ‘I’m not going to get fired over you guys having a book in there that you shouldn’t have’” in a classroom library, Bendell said.

Laws such as the Parental Rights in Education (HB 1557, which critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law) and legislation that increased review of library and instructional materials (HB 1467 in 2022 and HB 1069 in 2023) has injected a great deal of fear in the classroom, Bendell said.

In the last few years, she said she’s watched the new rules destroy the morale of teachers, contribute to the state’s teacher shortage that some say is the worst it’s ever been, marginalize some students and hurt education overall.

Tendrich, a teacher’s daughter who also sends her own daughter to public school, said she’s heard much of the same from teachers who are afraid to speak out — including one story of a chorus teacher who quit in the middle of the day because the songs she gave to her students had to be vetted first. She’s reaching out to them under the banner “Teachers for Tendrich” and asking them to respond to a survey anonymously.

“Teachers are not feeling safe on this,” Tendrich said, citing the rampant dissatisfaction registered in her poll among those who’ve responded so far. “There’s a lot of fear and intimidation against speaking out about what’s happening.”

Zapata, the Republican candidate who teaches Spanish at Atlantic Christian Academy, said he believes that things are unfolding as they should. He said he sees the need for the community oversight to override the usual professional guidelines from organizations such as the American Library Association that have commonly informed schools’ book choices for their libraries.

“Some books (found in Florida school libraries) have been so inappropriate for kids, it’s not even allowed for them to be spoken or read at a School Board meeting,” Zapata said.

“There have been instances where we see inappropriate language or inappropriate imagery in these kinds of books for specific grade levels. So, yes, I do believe that we should be watching on a consistent basis for that and making sure that that’s not something that we have.”

Still, these new rules have meant the exclusion of picture books and even books that today’s great-grandparents made classics, such as “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” which was among the 673 titles Orange County schools removed from the shelves last month. The laws allow for books to be challenged for not being age-appropriate or for depicting sexual conduct.

Even with rules that are vague and open to interpretation, media library specialists’ training now includes the information they could lose their license or face criminal prosecution for providing the wrong materials to students.

Bendell got through scanning 800 of the books in her classroom library so they could be screened for inappropriate content — even though the majority had come from the school district — when she had an epiphany.

“I’m like, ‘Really? This is what my job has come down to?’” she said.

The current rush to satisfy those getting alarmed about “indoctrination” in the schools is ignoring what’s worked for teaching students from all kinds of ethnicities and family types, she said. If she could indoctrinate, Bendell said, she’d concentrate on programming them to do their homework.

“This legislative branch, this Governor and these Moms for Liberty are trying to destroy what’s always worked for learning about living in a pluralistic society,” Bendell said. “It’s a grave injustice to our society. And it was never like this … until a few years ago.”

Tanner, working in the library, said that, practically speaking, the laws’ requirements have complicated putting together a book order, for example. A job that took six to eight hours now takes 20 to 24 hours, and that’s taking time away from the kids.

“I really I’m very passionate about reading and reading books to kids and helping them find really great books,” Tanner said. “It got to be not really teaching, but more like crowd control, and it just didn’t feel really fun anymore.”

Bringing these stories to Tallahassee is going to be one of Tendrich’s priorities, she said.

“Teachers teach out of a passion and when their profession gets over-legislated, they focus on not getting fired instead of focusing on their students’ learning and wellbeing,” Tendrich said.