- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Next on WEDU the culture wars are heating up Florida school board races.

The largest food drive in the country is this weekend.

And a new effort to make sure that Floridians have access to safe and clean water, all this and more right now on Florida This Week.

(bright upbeat music) - Welcome back.

USA today reports that this year Florida Republicans are revving up their focus on the nonpartisan school board elections that take place this fall.

The training and recruitment campaign is expected to result in dozens of conservative contenders entering the races for roughly 120 school board seats across Florida.

The election process begins with next month's candidate qualifying period.

The goal is to win control of more of Florida's 67 school districts and unseat any board members who dissent from governor Ron DeSantis education policies.

Already in the past two years, Florida school boards have seen intense battles over mask mandates, the teaching of black history, what can be said about gender identity, and whether or not to ban certain books from library shelves.

In Sarasota last month, school board chair Jane Goodwin shutting off of a critic's microphone for straying off topic spawned email threats after the incident was covered on Fox News, and a county Republican official tweeted out video of the exchange.

- My question is, does this apply to school board members?

Because at the last meeting, Shirley Brown was caught on the microphone talking about school board members.

- You're done, you're done Mrs. Bakondy, you're done.

- [Rob] And in Polk County a conservative citizens group has asked that several books be removed from school library shelves.

After getting lots of public input, the school system decided to leave the books on the shelves and let the parents decide what their kids can have access to.

- Kids need to remain innocent, they really do.

- I don't think that one group should decide this for me, for my child.

- You are completely empowered to limit your child to the extent that you want to or empower your child to give them free access.

- I highly encourage you to remove these books from our school libraries.

- And joining me now to talk about the school board races, Cathy Antunes is a radio host on WSLR 95.5 in Sarasota and deals with community issues.

And Travis Horn is a public relations executive, the President and CEO of Bullhorn Communications, a Republican.

And Cathy and Travis thank you very much for joining us.

Great to see you.

- Thanks for coming.

- Well let me talk to Cathy first.

Cathy why do you think Republicans are so interested in school board races now?

- Well, you know, I think that these social issues offer the opportunity for a lot of distraction.

People have strong feelings, and of course we need to navigate these things together as a community.

But honestly, I think these issues distract for something much more important that's happening at the state level.

We've got Manny Diaz who works for a charter school corporation being appointed the secretary of education, head of the department of education, and a new commission the charter school review commission there's legislation on the books that is looking to take local control from school boards when it comes to approving charter schools and give it to this commission, so an applicant can choose do I wanna go to the local board, or do I wanna go to a commission which is comprised of people that work under someone who works for charter schools?

I know where I would go if I were them.

So the privatization of public schools I think is the deeper agenda.

And these social issues work to distract parents.

I think parents do have rights and they always have, and parents absolutely should have a say about what their kids read.

In Sarasota County they do.

And they always, you know, for the time I've been here that's always been the case.

- Yeah.

Travis, let me ask you, I think it's fair to say the Republican base is fired up, especially after what happened in Virginia.

Why have the Republicans done this renewed focus on school board races?

- I'm not sure it's renewed focus.

Like I've said I've always long encouraged us to build a bench to actually make sure our parents are out there getting, participating, you know, participating in the local schools.

You know those are our future state representatives and state senators and perhaps even congressmen, maybe even hopefully we have a governor that's sitting in a school board somewhere in Florida.

I don't mind them being in involved.

- The governors complain though that some school boards are woke, and he says he's gonna get active in this.

- If they're playing, if they're putting the books, like I read the, or listened to the clip on the way over here that Tony Morrison book, if they're playing that, or if they're putting that in our school libraries, I wanna know about it as a parent.

I want to be active in that participation or in deciding that process, whether my own, my kid can be exposed to that.

Again, I have a three year old, who's not even entered public schools yet.

And a son who's graduating at 18 next week from Hillsborough County public schools.

So I have a vested interest in this.

And I, frankly, if this is what's going on in the schools, I'll look at a private schools as an option for my three year old, because I don't want her being exposed to that.

- Cathy, what about that?

I mean, Travis says that he doesn't want his kids reading Tony Morrison's work, and he's glad this is happening.

- You know I think there's a consensus out there that obviously material should be age appropriate.

I mean, the notion that a three year old would be exposed to this, which some people have said is absurd, but parents where I am have always had the opportunity to weigh in, and of course that's absolutely legitimate.

I agree with that again.

I think this is a distraction, and regarding charter schools, you know, we're seeing I think the impact of money in our elections, there are huge lobbying constituency.

And what a charter school will do a corporate charter school like Academica or others.

They set up the nonprofit education corporation, the school, and then they set up a real estate corporation, and they lease the property from the real estate corporation, which can be up to 40% of the school's budget.

Average is 14%, right?

For a building in terms of the school budget.

Then they bundle those leases and create derivatives for being sold on Wall Street.

A few years ago, I'm not sure if it's still the case, but the second largest lobbying group in the state of Connecticut were hedge funds lobbying for corporate charter schools.

So again, there's a profiteering and privatization agenda that is not getting enough attention.

And we have bought government these days.

Corporations can are speech, right?

They're considered people and money's considered speech.

And it's really distorted things.

- Travis our Republicans trying to expand charter schools and privatized public education.

- Yeah.

We love to see charter schools expanded.

I mean parents love charter schools and they're proven successful.

They're part of the reason that our schools are rated so highly in the state.

I mean, this is, yeah, I'd love to see more charter schools.

It sounds like a little bit of anti capitalist sort of messaging where we're saying that someone's making money.

If they're churning out better results, I don't mind if they're profiting off of it.

If they're turning on a better educational product for my children and it's allowing even minorities and folks who are in under advantaged communities to take advantage of better education, I say, I'm all for it.

- All right, Cathy what would you say back?

- I'd say the data doesn't support the idea that the outcomes are better.

And actually the most recent numbers I've heard is there's a 40% failure rate.

So this Detroit's been really, education's been hollowed out by charter schools.

I mean, Betsy DeVos operating in Michigan, take a look at the outcomes there.

Duval County, their test scores weren't that great.

And here's the other thing though, what charter schools will do, and we've seen this in Sarasota County.

We don't have that many corporate charter schools.

They get two payments, one in September and one in February.

And what we've seen is that, and after that February payment, they will let go of the kids.

And it appears to be they're letting go of kids who they think are going to perform poorly on tests.

So even charter schools who seem to be doing well, when you can cherry pick your students and you can disrupt a child's life like that because you don't want them to be a negative mark on your performance, these schools are about profit.

There's a reason we have a public sector.

And when you put profit in charge of education, you have a problem.

- I think this is more about allowing parents to cherry pick the better school their kid goes to.

I mean, I wanna give parents more flexibility and we've always talked about that.

And yeah, that's the tentative of my party for sure.

- At the center of this debate over schools, it includes cultural issues, and there's a whole question about books and gender identity, and whether you can teach all aspects of African American history, let me play something from the Lincoln project.

These are former Republicans.

Travis I wanna get you to comment first.

Let's play a little bit of a new ad by the Lincoln project.

- [Announcer] The freedom to learn.

The freedom to explore.

The freedom to challenge yourself and your beliefs.

As authoritarian radicals tear books off the shelves in schools and local libraries, those freedoms are under attack right now across America.

- There's a right answer and there's a wrong answer, and we want kids to learn to think so they get the right answer.

- [Announcer] School children told they can't read about Martin Luther king, about slavery, about the Holocaust.

- [Announcer] Two members want the BM books burned.

- [Man] They aren't the first to pull books off shelves and shovel them onto fires.

- All right Travis.

So the governor says he's expanding freedom.

His opponents say he's taking away freedom.

What do you say?

- I'm glad those are ex Republicans, former Republicans, 'cause that commercial is so over the top.

It's not the Republicans or the radicals here.

There's no Republican that I know of that said list don't teach about slavery in the schools, or lists don't teach about Martin Luther king, that is incorrect.

Now, you know, CRT, critical race theory, totally not a mainstream idea that I thought would ever be adopted or ever be talked about in the mainstream.

- Where's the line?

- I don't know, but that's for the parents to decide.

That's where the parents and you know, I never saw, again, I never thought I saw a day where the FBI would be targeting parents Mom's for Liberty, going out to schools and showing up at school board meetings and trying to be involved in their children's education.

It seems like we got this all flipped around the other way and we need to just embrace these people, being involved in their children's education and being informed parents.

But exposing them to these radical radical views is not what I want as a parent.

And I certainly wanna be able to go there and express my viewpoints without having some school board member violate my constitutional rights, pre clearing my thoughts she's reading my mind, that's just something that I never thought we would see.

I can't believe we're here.

All right, Cathy I think the defense is that the Republicans say that they're not taking away freedom, what do you say?

- Well, you know, you gotta be really careful when you're banning literature.

And I do think, you know, certainly in Sarasota County, there's a process in place for parents to weigh in on what their kids are reading.

But you know, since you had referenced Mrs. Bakondy she's no longer a member of Mom's for Liberty, frankly because of her disruption.

That's been reported in our local paper.

So even that group found difficulty with how she was behaving in school board meetings.

But I wanna read a piece of HB 7.

- We only have 20 seconds.

- Okay.

They're trying to legislate against feelings.

Against feeling guilty or psychological distress because of past actions by members of the community.

Frankly, slavery is bad.

We should feel bad about it.

How do you legislate against that and what are you saying we shouldn't teach about it.

So, you know, again, I think this is just trying to rile people up but when you look under the hood and really look at what they're doing, it doesn't make sense.

- All right, Cathy thanks a lot for taking part.

Travis thank you very much.

Thanks for the civil conversation.

I'm glad to hear both of your points of view.

- Glad to be part of it.

- Yep.

Thank you.

(gentle music) - Well, the biggest annual One Day Food Drive in the nation is this weekend.

Letter carriers and postal service employees will be picking up non-perishable food at our mailboxes.

It's a tradition that goes back 30 years.

And joining me now to talk about this weekend's drive.

Al Friedman is the president of the Florida State Chapter of the National Letter Carriers.

And Tony Diaz is the President of the Tampa Chapter of the union.

And Al and Tony, thanks for coming by Florida This Week.

Great to see you.

- [Al And Tony] Thanks for having us.

- So Al this hasn't gone on the last two years because of COVID, since 2019.

- Correct.

When we left off in 2019, Florida alone and that year of 2019, the country cause it's across the United States, did 72 million pounds of food on that one day, making it the largest one day food drive.

Florida that year 2019 set a record of just over 11 million pounds of that 72.

We did more than Texas and California combined.

It's the output and the coordination of all our carriers and the nature of the good nature of all our residents.

You know we have cards and bags we sent out to Florida has 9 million residential households.

So we mail out cards and bags.

We put in their mailbox.

And the incoming from that is amazing.

- If I didn't get a bag, can I just take a plastic bag or a plain paper bag and put it out next to the mailbox?

- We always tell 'em any bag will do.

And if you want to fill up more than one, please do.

- Tony the summertime is real slow.

We always hear about collections for food around Thanksgiving, Christmas, but the food pantries slowed down during the summertime.

- Right.

This is a great time for us, it's an ideal time actually, you know, you're gonna have school ending.

Kids are gonna have free lunches.

They depend on this.

We were at a food bank yesterday and the shelves were completely bare.

And we're gonna make a heck of a difference.

We're gonna have food and they're gonna have more than they know what to do with, which is a great thing.

- Now, people all over Central Florida are looking at this program right now.

Where does the food go?

Once we give it to our letter carrier, where does it go after that?

- Our motto has always been, the carriers are the eyes and ears of your community.

They see what's happening every day.

We now deliver seven days a week.

So we're out there every day.

That food that's collected from those local mailboxes stay at that local food banks.

We have hundreds of food banks in Florida.

So if you're living in Holly in the Hills, it's going to a food bank in Holly in the Hills.

In Lady Lake, it's going to Lady Lake, Tampa.

We have food banks wherever we go.

So I always kind of like love to call it, it's a neighbor helping neighbor.

Because that's a neighborhood we're gonna kick pick it up in and knows that the residents are gonna get it back.

- And Tony you're working with metropolitan ministries in Tampa?

- Correct.

Yeah, we got a great relationship with 'em.

We've partnered up with them.

They do some remarkable things at their campus on Florida Avenue, right outside of downtown Tampa.

We met with them yesterday.

We had a kickoff meeting.

It was very positive.

They are so excited for the opportunity to get this food in.

Their demand has increased so much.

I believe the president of the ministries, Tim Mark said yesterday was it's up 2000% for the pandemic.

- Why are the letter carriers involved in this?

Why did you take this up as a cause 30 years ago?

- We were called upon and it was an idea we came across that, like Tony had said Thanksgiving and Christmas people love to give for the holidays.

We saw the need when school is out, that the food banks are scrambling to how to feed hungry kids.

And it's still what bothers me Rob is today, 16 million kids go to bed hungry in this country every day.

And that's my drive to keep me going, of doing this for over 25 years.

This is our 30th anniversary and we've over 30 years we've picked up more than 1.8 billion pounds in 30 years.

- [Rob] That's great.

- So it's a need that just grew and it's continuing.

- Do I get that t-shirt?

- Yes, you do.

- You hold that up for the camera, this is a-- - It's beautiful.

- And what's it say?

- It says we're making sure letter carriers get to deliver more than just mail today.

And it's for you Rob for all the help you give us.

- Thanks a lot.

- Thank you Rob.

- Thank you, I appreciate it.

- Well, thanks for doing what you do.

And the Food Drive is Saturday, May 14th.

- May 14th, absolutely.

- And from now on like the shirt says, it'll be the second Saturday in May from this day forward.

- Well Al, Tony thanks a lot.

- Thank you very much.

- Great to see you guys.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you for having us.

Put a bag up on a mailbox Rob.

- Okay.

I will.

- Thank you.

(gentle music) - As summer approaches, more problems with water quality are showing up in Florida.

A health alert was issued in Palm Beach County this week because of new toxic algae blooms in Lake Okeechobee.

And in Sarasota clumps of thick greenish brown so-called gumbo algae have formed a vast film over Sarasota bays waters.

Local environmentalists are worried.

The floating material reveals there's a much deeper problem underneath the water.

Meantime, a new political committee has filed a proposed constitutional ballot issue that would create a fundamental right to clean and healthy waters here in Florida.

The amendment would allow lawsuits against state agencies for harm or threatened harm to lakes, rivers, wetlands, and other types of water bodies.

And joining me now is Joe Bonasia the Chair of the Florida Rights of Nature Network.

He's been active in advocating for the amendment.

Joe welcome to the show.

- Thank you very much for having me, pleasure to be here.

- So what would this amendment do if it were passed?

- Well, it would grant every Floridian, a fundamental right to clean and healthy waters.

My experience talking about this over the last few years is that most Floridians think we've already had this fundamental right, we don't.

And the key word here is fundamental, because fundamental rights are the highest rights they are.

They would take precedence over the lesser rights of let's say, polluters to pollute, or property owners to develop properties let's say in the middle of wetlands.

Furthermore, this right is indefeasible.

It means that it cannot be overturned.

It can't be overruled.

It can't be altered or compromised by any branch of government.

It's out of their reach.

And with this right we can hold the state branch of government accountable when it fails whether through action or inaction to protect our waters and does violate this fundamental right of ours.

- So let's say that housing developer or a mining company wanted to tear up a wetland and build houses on it or mine the property, what right would this open up to people nearby who saw it as a problem?

- Well, such a development would certainly degrade the aquatic ecosystems.

And in the amendment language, it covers just about every type of water that you can think of that exists in Florida, because it's not listed there then it can end up being exploited.

So building a wetlands would be a violation of this right.

We can hold the state accountable if it were to issue such a permit that would end up injuring wetlands, destroying at wetlands, and we've already lost by the way 9.3 million acres of wetlands in Florida.

We can hold state accountable if it issues to permit and it loses, and it does this a couple times, it will stop issuing permits to destroy wetlands and finally we can dramatically curtail the loss of wetlands in this state.

9.3 million acres.

When and where do you draw the line?

This is a legal tool to help us do that.

- So, Joe as you know there's some opponents out there and let me just read from a Seattle based organization.

They did an op-ed last year.

This idea was percolating out there.

And they said that the goal of your amendment is to allow the most radical environmentalists and anti water use fanatics to weaponize the courts to impose their desires on the state's property owners and government entities.

What would you say back?

- Well, first I think I would look at the language of that state and ask who's being radical.

Number two, I would ask what is radical about wanting clean and healthy waters?

Down here in Florida we have been fighting for clean water literally for decades.

We shouldn't have to fight for clean water.

It's very indicative of the fact that the system isn't working.

Right now it is the system that favors corporate rights and interests such as those of property owners, and it puts Floridians like you, like me, like your listeners right now, your viewers at a disadvantage.

With this amendment, with this fundamental rights, we can more than level play in the field, level the playing field.

We can correct a situation that obviously has done a great deal of damage to the ecosystems in this states.

Furthermore I think I would add to that, you know, in Orange County in 2020, they passed a right to clean water rights of nature amendment.

It was approved by 89% of those voters, nine outta 10.

When is the last time nine outta 10 Americans agree about anything.

They agreed about this.

Clean water is Paramount.

- Is your amendment the same as a right to nature amendment?

Does it say nature has the rights for standing in courts for instance?

- It does not.

This is not a rights of nature law, this is strictly a right to nature.

Very specifically right between healthy waters.

I am the chair of a rights of nature organization, obviously we would prefer a law like that.

A law sort of modeled on the Orange County law that gave right to clean water to citizens, and also gave granted basic rights to their waterways, rights to exist, to flow, to prevent pollution, to maintain a healthy ecosystem.

But what works on a county level does not work on a state level.

If you're shooting to amend a state constitution, you have to work within what is called a single subject rule.

You could not, we could not go for both a human right to clean water and a right of nature.

So you have to focus.

- So this year Florida ranked first in the nation for the highest total acres of lakes that are too polluted for swimming or for healthy aquatic life.

I mean, this measure comes at a time where we're having real trouble here in Florida.

- But we are having real trouble, and that really wasn't a surprising finding.

The facts are really kind of damning.

We've got 9,000 miles of rivers and Springs in the state that are contaminated with fecal bacteria.

We have about a thousand Springs in the state, 80% of them are impaired, which means they're either polluted or they're suffering flow problems.

Red tides which I know are a problem in the Tampa and Sarasota area, have exploded in the last 25 years.

We've had about 200 demands of red tide in Florida.

In the preceding 120 years there were only 64 demands.

We have taken a building block of life, fecal bacteria, blue green algae, and turned it into a monster.

We have about 4,400 bodies of water in this state and over half of them are polluted.

- Joe I wish we had more time, but thanks a lot for coming on Florida This Week.

- My pleasure.

(gentle music) - Thanks for joining us.

Send us your comments at ftw@wedu.org.

You can view this past shows online at wedu.org or the PBS app.

And Florida This Week is now available as a podcast.

You can find it on our website or wherever you download your podcast.

And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend and go bolts.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Florida This Week is a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.

(upbeat music)