Erika Donalds: Why Parents Should Be Able to Opt Out of Public School Entirely

And it's allowing the parents to opt out of this very extreme curriculum, the LGBTQ side. And what was interesting, it was the Muslims and the Christian parents that came together to say, I need to opt out of this curriculum. And they, at first, the school was saying, no, they have to do it. So do you imagine the school making that decision over the parents? I mean, absolutely insane. And of course, Justice Katonji Brown-Jackson basically saying, it's an attack on the public education. Very wrong. Let me ask you this, Erica, on the dismantling of the Department of Education. That's something that President Trump has been talking about. Why do we need significant reform in the Department of Education? How bureaucratic is this federal agency? Let me take a step back because this applies to both. This Mahmood case of yesterday, where now we're saying parents can opt out of these indoctrinating subject. I would say that actually proves that parents should also be able to opt out of the government system completely because it is an indoctrination system writ large in many cases. So if they can opt out of one subject, they need to be able to opt out of the whole thing. We need universal school choice across the nation. Every single family should be able to choose the school that works for their children. Now, why is that important in dismantling the department? The Department of Education is a bureaucracy that exists to uphold the status quo, the money that is pushed down from the federal government. And that's all it is. They don't educate a single child from the Federal Department of Education. They're pushing money down from the federal government and using it to control what's going on in the states and in the districts for their ideology historically. But it's a bureaucracy, which is just another layer of compliance and staff that we don't need as taxpayers and we don't want to pay for. If we can dismantle that bureaucracy and do what President Trump has said, push it down to the states, but more importantly, incentivize the states to put those funds in the children. Whether it means special needs students, because a parent wants to say, I want to tutor for my child, or I need this special service. If it's a parent of a low-income student who wants to choose a school outside of their neighborhood, that's safer, that aligns with their values, their religious beliefs, and that's going to provide better academically for their student. What we need to do is in the dismantling of this power from the top, empower the least among us and the most accountability, which comes from parents. So ultimately that is the goal of getting rid of the department, not just to say, oh, we got rid of this bureaucracy, but what are we going to do with that power? We disperse it to the parents where it belongs. On this as well, I want to ask you, Setzi, on the university side, on higher education, we have seen more violent protests happening on college campuses. We just saw the resignation of the University of Virginia president because of pressure from the Department of Justice on these DEI initiatives, because their focus has been on diversity, equity, and inclusion. What is happening with higher education? Even for parents are going, I'm sending my school, my kid over to college, and then they become a communist? No, thank you. Not in Florida. In Florida, we have done so much in higher education reform, whether it's the elimination of DEI, the elimination of critical race theory, we have gone through programs to determine return on investment because we want these kids to not leave with debt and not jobs. Under this governor, tuition for in-state students has not increased and he has committed it will not increase. But just last week, Florida had a major announcement and it was related to accreditation. I don't know if you've tracked it, but that is a huge imposition to what we've tried to get done here in Florida, because you have accreditors like Sachs who have criteria that say if you want to receive accreditation as a university, you have to have DEI. And so the governor, with six other states, has created this consortium so that there's an alternative, a conservative accreditor that says you cannot force ideology on universities. Now to President Trump's credit, he also issued an executive order that said you cannot, as an accreditor, require a university to violate a law within their state. So in Florida, where you have laws that say you cannot expend taxpayer dollars towards DEI, President Trump's executive order says, okay, Sachs, even though you're woke, in Florida, you're not allowed to be woke because now you cannot impose that ideology on that university. So I am so thankful that we have done it. Read the articles. Education has been a top priority for Governor DeSantis. And every time there's a new university president that's selected, everybody says it's another DeSantis ally. But that's not the case. What it is, it's somebody who believes in education, not indoctrination. The opposite is true around the country. And in this state, you didn't see, on October 7th, protests happening at universities. In fact, it was minutes where an encampment tried to get put up at the University of Florida, and nine students were arrested by state law enforcement, the Florida Highway Patrol. It was the troopers that immediately removed them from there. Forgive me, I know I'm really passionate. I'm a former prosecutor here in Miami, so I feel like I'm giving a closing statement every time I talk. But this is a big deal because we get parent after parent who's reaching out to us looking for us to be sort of the help in removing government. It's funny. It's not like what you get in New York and California, where folks flock to the government to sort of provide them with the assistance to remain on government. In Florida, the constituents say, we want you to get out of our schools. We want you to get out of our lives. And it's so refreshing to be in government and do what President Trump is doing at the national level. And so that's why I say you see the Florida model really being spread throughout the nation, and it's been extremely rewarding.