Tampa Bay Times, Letter Link, Published March 7, 2023.
Tallahassee overreach
Florida’s edicts on classrooms are wearing thin with some school board members | March 3
The overreach from Tallahassee into our schools is extraordinary and inconsistent with the conservative value of home rule, or local control. This was also the value and determination of Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams and other Founding Fathers when they debated and determined that schools should be locally led and expressly nonpartisan. From my research, the reason they felt this way (and this remains true today) is that the students who attend our schools largely remain in or return to our communities, so communities should largely determine what they need from graduates, and that the changing of political parties and their focus of the day would be destabilizing for our education system. We are certainly seeing their prognosis play out across Florida.
Laura Hine, St. Petersburg
*The writer is a member of the Pinellas County School Board.
