Governor DeSantis gave his education announcement at the Jax Classical Academy, far from the first time he has been there. There can be no doubt this is his favorite Northeast Florida charter school (and the KIPP school is probably very jealous about that fact). It routinely gets luminaries on the right, Marco Rubio was also there a few months back
I think its past time we ask why this school which also did not have a mask mandate, and if the state would have done grades got an F receives so much attention from the republican establishment.
David Withum is the headmaster and his Twitter feed reads like a right-wing and curious tenth grader musing about education but a few stand out.
Now I have issues with teacher certification too, but at the same time, having minimum standards for teachers is not one of them. He also had a tweet where he talks about getting rid of grades, as a c+ student maybe I can get behind that one, as long as we did it retroactively.
Impressive right? But the thing is the TU reported the Classical Academy would have been an F school had the state done grades. Now. I guess technically you can have great improvement and still be an F but it is unlikely.
And we wouldn't be complete without an anti-teacher union tweet.
Finally, he doesn't have a very high opinion of education reporters either. Maybe you are slaves to teacher unions?
Now to be honest I get frustrated too. I think there are a lot of stories that go under the radar, but anyway. So that's the headmaster and admittedly nothing super crazy, but maybe they left that to the operator Erica Donalds and where they get their curriculum.
They get their curriculum from the Hillsdale Barney Charter school initiative.
https://www.jaxclassical.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=424057&type=d
Hillsdale is a small far-right liberal arts college out of Michigan, and recently they have sent out a series of mailers to locals.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Imprimis_Mar_3-21_6pgNM.pdf
They espouse some pretty radical theories where they basically say racism is a made-up tool to divide society so the radical left can seize power.
For as long as I can remember, the right has accused public schools of trying to indoctrinate kids; well, friends, this seems like some straight-up far-right indoctrination on their part.
Furthermore, last year, Hillsdale sent out a Facebook poll asking how afraid of socialism people were; I kid a little, but the answers were basically really scared, and really #$@%ing scared,
https://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2020/02/troubling-details-about-jaxs-new.html
Then, however, it gets worse.
This is an Optima Foundation.
https://optimaed.org/schools/
The Optima Foundation is led by Erika Donalds
https://optimaed.org/leadership/
Erika Donalds has rather interesting views on banning books and troubling views on LGBTQ individuals.
Banning Books
http://cbldf.org/2016/09/collier-county-school-board-voters-reject-censorship-agenda/
Removing LGBTQ protections
https://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/education/2018/01/01/mother-gay-teen-critiques-collier-school-boards-anti-lgbtq-decision/983839001/
Gay people are going to hell.
Just some random troubling stuff, from the Tampa Times,
She led the conservative Florida Coalition of School Board Members, which split from the larger Florida School Boards Association over vouchers. She pressed for school board term limits and a statewide charter school authorizer in an amendment that famously failed Supreme Court muster amid heated statewide debate.
https://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/2019/01/23/off-her-school-board-erika-donalds-focuses-on-florida-school-choice-expansio
So that's a lot but that's who they are. That's where DeSantis and Rubio want to go.
I think there is a story here.
CG
No comments:
Post a Comment