State Board of Education takes action to continue safeguarding students
Press release from Florida Department of Education
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Today, the State Board of Education unanimously approved rules to further protect students in Florida schools. These rules implement legislation signed this year by Governor Ron DeSantis to ensure student safety and preserve the innocence of children. The State Board of Education’s actions reinforce Florida’s leadership on the issues of school safety, parents’ rights, and student data privacy.
“Our students are safer due to the vision of Governor DeSantis and the actions taken by the Legislature, which have now been approved by the State Board,” said Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, Jr. “Florida has continued to lead the way in protecting our students, and I am proud of all the work we are doing on their behalf.”
Specific rules approved today that will further protect students and ensure their continued welfare include:
Standards Relating to Gross Immorality and Moral Turpitude
- Protects children by classifying offenses such as possession of child pornography or admitting a child into an adult live performance as grossly immoral or an act of moral turpitude for the purpose of discipline against a Florida educator’s certificate.
Designation of Restrooms and Changing Facilities in Florida Private Schools and Florida College System Institutions
- Requires restrooms and changing facilities at private schools and Florida College System institutions to be designated for exclusive use by biological males or females, or provide a single-occupant, unisex restroom/changing facility.
School Safety and Threat Management
- Creates the new Florida Harm Prevention and Threat Management Model and establishes protocols related to threat management, a process by which school districts, K-12 schools, charter school governing boards, and charter schools identify, assess, manage, and monitor potential and real threats to student safety.
Protecting Student Personal Information
- Requires school districts and charter school governing boards to adopt policies that protect personally identifiable information of students when using required online educational services.
Special Magistrate
- Updates the special magistrate process for unresolved student welfare complaints and outlines a new special magistrate process for school and library materials objections.
The full State Board of Education agenda and supporting materials can be found on the Department of Education’s website at https://www.fldoe.org/policy/state-board-of-edu/meetings/2023.
Is that 🤔 what they call Propaganda and white washing history.. Safe Guarding 🙄 what a joke
How absurd. How come there aren’t any safeguards against pedophile priests, ministers, camp counselors, etc.? Most of the lewd and lascivious acts against children seem to come from that group of people who take advantage of their status as a “trusted” person to commit heinous acts.
Are they in our schools?
You forgot to list teachers and other school personnel
“…outlines a new special magistrate process for school and library materials objections.”
I thought there were going to be safety rules to protect kids at the book burnings?
My childhood experience did not include metal detectors at school entrances, on-campus safety officers, random locker inspections, assaults on teachers, and confusion about pronoun identity outside a drama presentation.
The actual ‘debate’ among adults about who can use a boys and girls restrooms is indicative of how lost in the fog of political tribalism American culture has become.
That the State Board of Education tries to keep the attention on children’s safety – an awkward task for an education bureau – appears to only deepen the tribal bigotry.
Today is a different day with different challenges than when I was a kid when there wasn’t a need for more rules protecting students because that was the cultural responsibility of all parents, teachers, and administrators.
While I admit I have no answer to these issues other than accepting the education and protection of children cannot be politically mitigated through partisan polemics. No matter what is said or what laws are passed kids are still going to be left in a hot car with the windows rolled up because a parent was thinking about something other than the actual safety of the child.
From a legal standpoint – the go-to system when all else fails – laws are passed and repealed as our representatives attempt to maintain societal order. When laws are not obeyed, applied with difference to identity, or selectively enforced, then the problem isn’t the rule of law but with those who selfishly impose their personal will upon others; there’s a difference between personal ‘space’ and public ‘space.’
Schools are public spaces which, culturally, we used to respect with conduct conducive to learning, teaching, and development of
age-appropriate social skills.