The Covid epidemic showed parents where the schools were failing their students. Anytime the lives of children are disrupted to that extent, the faults in the system will be more apparent.

The United States has always prided itself on how education is a local responsibility. That has led to vast differences in the quality of what is offered from district to district, even between neighboring counties. The pandemic brought those fault lines into the homes of the students because of remote computerized instruction.

The life blood of our educational system is funding. Funding is based on the number of students in a district. Since Covid, many students have simply disappeared from the student rolls, especially in larger districts. New York City, the largest district in the country, has somehow lost more than 50,000 students. But the size of districts is not the only indicator of lost kids.

The biggest indicator was how long remote learning continued. Because of the governor’s insistence on a return to the classroom earlier than other states, Florida has rebounded in the number of students and remains robust as compared to some other states such as New York and California.

However, private and religious schools have had a net increase of 75,000 students nationally as of the end of the last school year compared to two years earlier. I don’t think this is so much an endorsement of religious or private schools as parents realizing that many public-school districts had become unreliable about whether they would be open or not.

Schools are not only a place for education but also the default childcare facility for parents who work. Without predictability, many parents cannot hold down a job. Private and parochial schools have proven more dependable by remaining open.

Another benefit to these schools and public charter schools is the ability of parents to take a more active role in their children’s education. As we have just seen in Martin County’s recent school board election, the defeat of both Liz Bernstein and Tony Anderson was the rejection of the supposed experts in favor of parental control. Both Jen Russell and Amy Pritchett, the newly elected school board members, are in favor of parents being in ultimate control.

There is a problem in achieving this when schools are under a centralized district. By its very nature, a district needs uniform rules and instructions to measure success. The entire parental rights movement is hampered by a centralized district format.

The other factor keeping parents from being in charge is the state instituting too many regulations…from LGBTQ+ to how to teach history or civics. Some parents may see Tallahassee’s heavy hand as against centralized districts being in control, but it ultimately affects parental control by not allowing a divergence of curriculum.

Every school should be seen as a public charter school with decisions made in each institution on instruction and every aspect of a school’s operation. A board made up of parents working with a principal and teachers can accomplish that.

The state’s function should be to collect the taxes and then send the vouchers to whichever schools the parents have selected for their children. The state should certify teachers and administrators. They should devise uniform mandatory tests to determine that the students are being given a good education.

If he really believes in parental rights, Governor DeSantis needs to limit the involvement of the state. Self-limiting state authority is hard for any politician to do and the governor is no exception in this case. However, without a reduction of state-level mandates and requirements, it will be impossible to really have what so many profess to want…local parental control.