The Florida Board of Education has until Tuesday, July 6 to approve the K-5 English Language Arts curriculum desired by the county School Board and dozens of vocal parents and political activists.
That’s the deadline for the school district to order its K-5 ELA curriculum for the upcoming year for 13 elementary schools from the list of educational programs approved by the state Board of Education.
Amplify Education Inc., of Brooklyn, is appealing the state board’s rejection of its K-5 ELA curriculum and the company’s efforts are being reinforced by School Board member Teri Barenborg and conservative political organizer Susan Mehiel.
If the Amplify program is not approved, the alternative is a K-5 ELA curriculum produced by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt that was the second choice of school district officials but met with unrelenting opposition from Mehiel and her Education Action Committee for purportedly promoting a “progressive” political agenda.
The controversy has raged for three months as parents at School Board meetings have debated whether the Houghton Mifflin curriculum contains lessons based on “Social Emotional Learning” and “Critical Race Theory” and whether those concepts are subversive.
Critical Race Theory puts forth the idea that racism is embedded in U.S. society and institutions.
Mehiel sent out an email blast Sunday rallying her supporters to “melt the phone lines” at the state Board of Ed in Tallahassee on Monday and Tuesday and “simply say, ‘the DOE must approve Amplify by July 6.’”
But there’s no guarantee the appeal will succeed, and the state Board of Education doesn’t meet again until July 14.
Consequently, the School Board continued on a dual path, voting 4-to-1 to buy the Amplify K-5 ELA curriculum, if it receives approval by July 6.
Otherwise, the district will purchase the Houghton Mifflin curriculum, so the materials arrive in time for teachers to prepare for the reopening of schools on Aug. 10.
School Superintendent David Moore said he is ready to deploy either curriculum so students can learn enough to earn high scores on standardized tests.
The district’s administrators, principals and teachers can be trusted to protect against any inappropriate lessons from seeping into classroom materials or rogue teachers from pursuing personal political agendas, Moore said.
“We’re very comfortable we are doing the will of the community,” Moore said Friday during a radio interview. “We can’t create this divisiveness regarding things that are just are not there in the curriculum.”
While preferring the Amplify curriculum, school district officials dispute the idea there is anything subversive or overly political in the Houghton Mifflin textbooks.
Some 30 people attended the June 22 School Board business meeting to speak out about the controversy after Mehiel and others held a pep rally against the Houghton Mifflin curriculum on June 21 at the Vero Beach Heritage Center.
Lamarre Notargiacomo, a parent and grandparent, told the School Board she believes the Houghton Mifflin curriculum contained “political bias” and “racially charged indoctrination.”
The overall tone of the materials is politically and racially divisive as well as extremely negative,” Notargiacomo said. “The entire country is in an uproar over Critical Race Theory, yet certain members of the board have implied we don’t know what we’re talking about, or we’re misinformed.”
But Joseph Parr, a Stetson University student who graduated from Vero Beach High School, complained he and other members of We The Parents for Equality “were pretty much accused of pushing a Communist-Marxist agenda.”
“Diversity, equity and inclusion aren’t euphemisms and code words,” Parr told the School Board. “They are practices we live by because they are the right and just things to do.”
