The Florida School Boards Association was among the first in the country to criticize the national organization for characterizing concerned parents as domestic terrorists, as The Free Press reported back in October.
Now, the Sunshine State group has followed those in places like South Carolina and Missouri by dropping its membership in the National School Boards Association
As reported earlier this week, “In a bipartisan decision, the board of directors voted to not pay next year’s dues for the National School Boards Association, citing concerns over ‘governance, financial issues, transparency, and leadership.’”
The decision took effect on Tuesday.
“The board voted to condemn the letter that [the NSBA] sent to the White House requesting the FBI to get involved with local school board businesses,” Escambia County School Board member Kevin Adams explained to local media.
As the Free Press reported, the controversy stemmed from a letter the NSBA’s president and executive director sent to President Joe Biden claiming that its members complained about feeling threatened by parents who appeared before local school boards to rebel against mandatory masking, promoting permissive transgender policies and Critical Race Theory indoctrination. The NSBA equated such critics to domestic terrorists and hate-crimes perps.
Attorney General Merrick Garland responded by pledging to mobilize FBI agents and federal prosecutors to monitor and intervene in these local meetings.
Yet, affiliated state groups, like Florida’s, began to criticize the letter and sever ties with the national organization. One reason was that they believed local law enforcement could adequately handle unruly parents. Even the NSBA’s board publicly complained that the letter was sent without its knowledge or authorization.
The NSBA’s heavy-handedness was so egregious that even liberal states, like Illinois and Pennsylvania, dropped out of the organization.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis applauded the FSBA for its move.
“I support what the Florida School Board Association did,” DeSantis said on Thursday, according to Florida Politics.
“The National School Board Association was using its organization to advance a partisan narrative and agenda. And they created this letter to try to get the FBI to start basically running interference at school board meetings,” he added.
“They’re not interested in having the FBI go after the guy in Waukesha, Wisconsin, which was an intentional act of terrorism,” the governor continued. “But they somehow think a parent who is upset that there’s bad curriculum being put in schools, or forced masking or all these other things, that if they speak out, then somehow they are a domestic threat? Give me a break.”
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