OPINION:
Americans are fleeing blue states and seeking refuge in the likes of Texas and Florida. Austin and Tallahassee realize the key to becoming an attractive destination for parents is to shake up the schoolhouse.
You can tell just how complacent the education bureaucracy has become by the Florida teachers’ unions’ attempt to treat the curriculum as if it were highly classified material. Fortunately, the Florida Education Association and United Faculty of Florida retreated after Administrative Law Judge Jodi-Ann V. Livingstone sided with the Florida Education Department.
Sunshine State officials had ordered state colleges to reveal the “textbooks, instructional materials, and certain course syllabi” used. The regulation is meant to nudge these institutions toward more affordable textbook options while also letting parents know where tuition dollars are directed.
“Money that should be going to support Florida’s teachers was once again wasted on a frivolous lawsuit they were never going to win,” Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas wrote on X. “They walked away because they know the truth: Transparency matters. Posting syllabi and reading lists for postsecondary students is simply the right thing to do.”
Contrast this with what’s happening in Virginia, where local Democrats dream of permanent, one-party rule. It starts with a payoff to Big Labor in Fairfax County. There, the $3.9 billion public school budget increased by $175 million even though the number of pupils is dropping.
The situation would be even worse if not for America First Legal’s December lawsuit victory against the county’s radical gender policy forcing school girls to share bathrooms with boys. The U.S. Education Department has also piled on, freezing federal funding until the Fairfax County School Board surrenders.
Texas has already rejected the “Heather Has Two Mommies” propaganda favored by Northern Virginia classroom subversives. Instead, the Lone Star State proposes a bolstered reading list for K-12 students. The new selections bring back classic novelists like Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis and, for the kindergartners, Dr. Seuss.
In April, the state Board of Education will finalize the change, aiming to make its public school options more competitive. They’ve had to up their game because of pressure from school choice initiatives such as the brand-new Texas Education Freedom Accounts, which contribute up to $10,000 toward private school tuition or $2,000 for homeschoolers.
“The applications and interest in this program have been overwhelming and confirm what we’ve known all along: Texas parents want more choice and more control over their child’s education,” Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said in a statement.
K-12 schools shouldn’t be a political battleground, but leftists can’t control themselves. That’s why Mr. Abbott appointed an inspector general earlier this month to resolve educator misconduct. Presumably, the first item on Levi Fuller’s agenda will be handling the way some progressive instructors have coerced students into walking out during class to march in anti-ICE protests.
“Allowing students to leave campus during the school day without prior notice to parents or the opportunity for parents to opt in or out is a clear violation of parental rights and undermines the trust families place in their schools,” three state Board of Education members wrote in a complaint.
Mr. Abbott and his counterpart, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have heard the grievances. By siding with moms and dads, they’re growing. Leaders who listen only to unions are losing their economic and political relevance.
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