As summer draws to a close, my wife and I, like many other parents in Florida, have been preparing our children for the start of school. During Florida’s back-to-school sales tax holiday, we went around selecting supplies and talking to the children about their new classmates and teachers.
Every parent wants their child to learn in a safe atmosphere, at the absolute least. Since the Parkland shooting, the Florida Legislature has prioritized school safety legislation, making Florida a model state for best practices in school safety. To keep our students safe and provide parents with peace of mind, we must constantly searching for innovative technologies and sensible solutions.
In a same vein, we want our children to master the fundamentals of science, arithmetic, reading, and history. Too many students enter the third grade without being able to read and perform math at grade level, which is a crucial indicator of future academic achievement, so I’m not happy with where we are at the moment. Therefore, we established monies for students to obtain additional reading and math assistance at home and at school while I was the Speaker of the Florida House. We also replaced outdated, ineffective approaches with the phonics-based science of reading. We are aware that before children can utilize reading to learn, they must first learn to read.
Beyond academics, education is essential in forming our children’s personalities. It ought to inculcate the timeless and universal principles that equip people for a purposeful existence. For instance, classical educators mold pupils to realize their full potential as human beings by teaching them to find what is true, good, and beautiful in every topic. My parents are a pastor and a public school teacher. My parents felt that education should develop strong character in addition to opening possibilities for a future career. I wish the same for all of Florida’s children, including my own.
We revolutionized education when I was Speaker by implementing the biggest school choice scholarship program in the country: universal school choice. Every family, regardless of income or ZIP code, has the freedom to select the educational setting that best suits their child’s requirements and upholds their values because Florida is now the state with the highest ranking for educational freedom. Private schools, homeschools, and microschools have all expanded as a result, and our public schools have had to improve to keep up with the competition. In addition to ensuring that charter schools, which have been instrumental in Florida’s success, continue to receive the funding they are due, we have invested more than $1 billion and counting to increase the pay of our public school teachers.
Florida exemplifies parental rights in education by giving parents the knowledge and power that are legitimately theirs alone in regards to the education, health, and welfare of their children.
I hope we pause during this back-to-school season to reflect on the significance of these audacious policies and monetary commitments. To help students succeed in their careers and in life, education should give them a solid foundation in core topics, foster the development of strong character, and teach them how to think critically.
Because we are prepared to question the current quo in order to provide the finest educational results for our children, Florida is a national leader in education. To ensure that every child in our state has the chance to thrive, let’s recommit to bolstering our schools, assisting our educators, and giving parents more options as the new school year gets underway. The Florida Way is that!
In addition to serving as speaker of the Florida House from 2022 to 2024, Paul Renner is a member of the State University System of Florida’s Board of Governors.
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