- [Narrator 1] This is a production of WEDU PBS Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- [Narrator 2] Coming up right now on WEDU, New College's President defends the conservative takeover of the longtime progressive school.

Florida's top health official questions the safety of the new COVID-19 booster shot.

Ron DeSantis says Donald Trump has almost zero chance of winning the presidency if he's convicted of a felony.

And 300 books have officially been banned from Florida School Libraries.

All this and more, next on Florida this week.

(interlude music) Welcome back.

Joining us on the panel this week, state Representative Fentrice Driskell, represents District 67 in Hillsborough County and is a democrat.

Danny Kushmer, is a real estate broker and a businessman and a Republican.

Don Peters is a member of the Pinellas County School Board, is a non-partisan seat, but she is a registered Republican.

And Mike Deeson is an independent journalist who's registered as a Democrat, but has also voted for Republicans in certain elections.

And thank you all for doing the program.

Nice to see you.

- [Fentrice] Thank you for having us.

- Well, the newly installed president of New College, former house speaker Richard Corcoran, defended the DeSantis Administration's takeover of New College at the Tampa Tiger Bay meeting on Friday.

New College in Sarasota has been undergoing a makeover since January When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis installed the conservative majority on the board of trustees.

That led to the appointment of Corcoran as interim president.

In March, trustees abolished the diversity office on campus, and in August, the board voted to begin the process of dismantling the gender studies program.

In recent months more than a third of the faculty have left.

Corcoran received his law degree at Televangelist Pat Robertson's Regent University.

Here's part of what he said on Friday.

- And the biggest way it's gone off the tracks isn't its faculty still a tremendous faculty.

It's in its leadership.

They raise about two and a half million dollars a year.

Keep in mind, a private school just down the road, not nearly as special in my opinion as New College, raises 15 to $20 million a year.

And they don't even leave Sarasota County.

Okay what's your expenses?

About $3 million.

You're losing $500,000 a year?

In a foundation that's supposed to augment and help students in scholarships.

Then we had this great idea that since we need a bigger return on our investment.

If we can go get 15% in the market, then we can cover our salaries and our overhead and we don't have to worry about bleeding anymore.

So they did that, they got in risky investments.

In one calendar year, they lost $6 million in investments.

The school's leadership was absolutely politely and kindly said, a mess.

If you want to have that great liberal arts education, you have to be dead center.

It doesn't mean you have all your professors are moderates or dead center.

I'm saying you have to draw that line in the middle, and you have to have faculty on both sides.

Dating myself a little bit, but you want William F. Buckley on your faculty, and you want Gore Vidal.

- And after the speech, I got this reaction from a New College parent.

- My name's David Deagle.

- [Interviewer] And David, what did you think of Mr. Corcoran's speech?

- I thought it was pretty shallow, no substance whatsoever.

We had a parent who asked about the treatment of students and he decides he wants to talk about pins and buttons that tour guides are putting on their shirts.

I don't think he addressed the substance of a single question that was answered.

Someone asked about teachers, and rather than mentioning the treatment of teachers, rather than mentioning the thousands of empty teacher positions we have the state of Florida, he decides he wants to talk about his relationship with the teachers union leadership.

There's just nothing there.

- Fentrice at the speech on Friday, president Corcoran said that he was committed to creating a better liberal arts college and he wanted to go down the center and although people in the DeSantis administration have said that they want a version of Hillsdale College installed at New College.

Corcoran said that he didn't want that.

So what's your take on what's going on at New College?

- Well, when I think about what is happening at New College, and I got to listen to some of Mr. Corcoran's remarks there, and I would say, despite his performance at Tiger Bay, we can all read the news articles.

We've been following this story for months, and we know that the intention is to reshape New College in the image of a very conservative institution.

I listened to Mr. Corcoran say that the problems at New College were with the leadership and that they're cleaning it up, trying to make it a better place.

If that's the case, then why has a third of the faculty left?

I have a young person in my district who's a constituent and he attends New college and he's very troubled.

He tells me about what he and his fellow students are going through.

They no longer feel included.

They don't understand what's happening.

They don't understand what the value of their degree is going to be.

So to say that these changes are being made in the name of efficiency and cost savings, I think is misleading to the public.

What we're seeing is one of the greatest fleecing in public education where you have a president at New College now making roughly $700,000.

That's before you include all the other incentives with housing and vehicles, et cetera.

That's a thousand dollars per student.

That's more than the president at Florida State makes.

That's more than the president and University of Florida makes.

And this seems to be the opportunity for DeSantis to reward his cronies and to continue to push his indoctrination of what he thinks higher education should be in Florida.

- Danny, what do you think of the governor's makeover of New College?

- Well, I think what we're missing here is really the story is that New College has experienced record enrollment right now.

So, what I see is there is a longing for a more traditional more conservative middle of the road type of training in the state of Florida.

While we preach all the time about not necessarily needing to go to college, get a trade, be a plumber, be electrician, all these trades we need.

And I certainly see that in the real estate industry.

There are people that still want to go to college and for many of those folks, they feel excluded because these colleges have have turned into social engineering in my view.

So having a college focus split down the middle is what we need in the state of Florida.

The President Corcoran did say how the college was losing money.

Well, now with record enrollment, maybe we will start to see that turnaround as well.

And part of this story as well as eliminating the diversity department of the school.

And the federal government government right now instituting a civil rights investigation on someone that wouldn't call someone by his or her known pronoun or they wanted to be called.

What a waste of taxpayer dollars that we're doing at that point.

- Danny, just a quick follow up.

Is it clear to you whether or not the DeSantis administration wants a version of Hillsdale College or does it want a middle of the road university?

Is it clear to you?

- Well, my wife and I were talking about that last night.

She said, man that that would be great.

I love Hillsdale College.

We do, I mean Hillsdale College is a need that we have in this country.

But that aside, president Cochran said he wanted a school down the middle.

I have to trust that that is his goal and I think that's what we need in our state.

- Mike, what's your take on this?

- Well the problem is, it's not down the middle.

It is unbelievably right wing conservative and the fact that it does have an increased enrollment, but so many had left and that certain parts of society who went to New College no longer feel comfortable there.

LGBTQ students say they are discriminated against, they don't feel comfortable.

I have talked to a lot of New College graduates who said to me, I would never have made it through college unless I found New College because of its unique way of running.

It was a special college in the state of Florida.

We have plenty of middle of the road colleges in our state and New College was something special.

Now it is going toward the Hillsdale college model, despite what Corcoran says about it, and I think it's destroying the school.

It's not down the middle of the road.

- Fentrice, Richard Corcoran made the point that New College student enrollment was dropping before the state stepped in and made this change and that it was losing money.

So that's why the governor had to come in and change the board of trustees.

- Yeah, but one plus one doesn't equal two here, right?

Because we're coming in to change the board of trustees in the name of efficiency or in the name of making it like Hillsdale.

If you wanna come in and you wanna help New College to perform better, then then do that.

But what we've seen is an extreme swing to the right that is completely transforming the culture and the character of that place.

And I think it's important for students to feel included and welcomed and visible and seen.

And that is what they had at New College.

- Okay.

Well the Tampa Bay Times reports that Florida's top government health official recommended this week that Floridians under the age of 65 should not get the new COVID-19 booster vaccine.

- [Narrator 2] That advice runs counter to federal guidance.

This week the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the vaccine booster for everyone six months and older ahead of an expected busy flu and COVID-19 season this Fall.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis to head Florida's Health Department, alleges that the new vaccine was approved without meaningful clinical trial data performed in humans.

And without proof of the vaccine safety and effectiveness.

- There's essentially no evidence for it.

There's been no clinical trial done in human beings showing that it benefits people.

There's been no clinical trial showing that it is a safe product for people.

And not only that, but then there are a lot of red flags.

- [Narrator 2] It comes as cases of COVID-19 in Florida have risen over the summer with almost 24,000 cases reported in the final week of last month.

- Now, other medical experts don't agree with Surgeon General Ladapo's findings.

- This is just like what we do with the flu shot.

Every year the flu shot changes a little bit, but it's trying to match the circulating strains with the vaccine.

I don't know what the basis of his saying that it shouldn't be given to people under 65 and why should we give it to people over 65?

If it's bad for one group, it's bad for another group.

And that doesn't make a lot of sense.

- Mike, I gotta ask you, you're home in part because you've got COVID.

How are you feeling?

Are you okay?

- I have felt better.

I'm okay.

Fortunately, I had all my vaccinations up till now, which is so important because people who were not vaccinated had 17 times greater chance of dying from COVID.

At one point, 98 to 99% of the deaths in this country were people who did not get vaccinated.

That dropped a bit, but those who then died from COVID who had been vaccinated, most of them did not get the boosters.

Remember that the Surgeon General stood on the steps of the Supreme Court with other doctors in white coats talking about Zinc as being used to combat COVID.

I can't say it, hydroxychloroquine as a treatment.

That's a malaria drug that the CDC says does not work for it.

I don't know what this guy is thinking about, but it is dangerous.

And like I said, I am fortunate, even though I have it, I have been vaccinated as much as I can.

This is just downright dangerous, it's downright crazy.

- Danny, what do you think about this?

Is the governor pushing Ladapo to do this or is Ladapo giving the best medical advice available?

What's your take on this?

- Well, first I would hope that Ladapo is giving his best medical advice and honestly, you can find a group of doctors in any circle that's gonna give you the answer that you want.

I am not an anti-vaxxer by no means, all of my children were vaccinated before going to school.

I was vaccinated, but honestly, I got the MMR vaccine, I've never had the mumps, I've never had measles and I've never had rubella.

But you can get vaccinated for COVID and have 16, 17, 18 boosters and you're still gonna get COVID.

I got COVID back in December of 2020, so I was one of the OGs and it was bad, there is no doubt about it, but I survived it.

Both my wife and I survived it.

We quarantined ourself.

We did not get tested.

So we don't know for sure if we had it, but we're pretty positive.

But what I would say is, yes there is an increase, but since day one there has been less right around the 1% or less of a death rate since day one.

It has not changed.

It may have gone down a 10th or a hundredth of a percent, but look at Johns Hopkins and their numbers, it's 1% or less since day one.

So if you want to get boosted, that's great, go ahead and do it.

But it should never be a mandate and I don't think the government should recommend it.

- Dawn you're on the school board, welcome to the show, by the way.

- Thank you.

- What's your take as a school board member in Pinellas County?

Are there any mandates in the works for COVID or for masks now that we're seeing a resurgence of new variants of COVID-19?

- Well, I'm like Danny.

I'm not an anti-vaxxer by any stretch of the imagination.

My daughters attended public schools, they got all their required vaccinations all through public school.

But I don't think that we should mandate vaccines.

I think that's a personal choice and it's up to the individual to make that decision for themselves.

And if they wanna talk to their doctor about it, so be it.

Pinellas County Schools does not have any mandates in the works for masks or vaccines.

In fact the governor said that we can't do that as a government entity.

- I remember talking to some Pinellas teachers who were afraid of teaching back at the height of the first round of COVID because they were worried that people were not vaccinated and not wearing masks, and they worried that classrooms were unsafe.

- Well, if they don't feel safe, they should take the precautions they feel necessary to protect themselves and vice versa.

- Okay.

Fentrice is the Surgeon General of the state of Florida politicizing this issue or is he basing this on sound science?

- Well, he's continuing the politicization of this issue.

And as I was listening to our conversation, I think our words would ring hollow to the members of my district, the constituents who have lost family members due to COVID and friends who have lost family members due to COVID.

We're talking about this in such an antiseptic way, but the reality is that people suffered great losses during that time and those losses probably could have been mitigated if the president that we had at the time, Donald Trump didn't start politicizing this issue from day one.

Public health exists to help the people to help the public, but the minute it became politicized, all of a sudden folks were at one another's throats around these issues.

I believe that every Floridian deserves a freedom to be healthy, prosperous, and safe.

And that sometimes that means maybe we have to take self out of it and take a broader view in terms of how we can help best protect our entire community.

- Okay, well- - And Rob, we all ought to say that DeSantis asked people to get vaccinated before he decided this was a political issue he could use the other way.

He endorsed vaccinations and then all of a sudden it became a political issue and he came out against it and now he has the Surgeon General backing him up.

It's ridiculous.

- Danny, do you wanna respond in just a few seconds?

10 seconds?

- Well sure, I would thanks.

People do change their mind.

Trump was all for the vaccines in the beginning.

It was what was being told to us to do.

So as the science progressed, as we started to understand, there was still less than a 1% death rate in this whole process.

The mandates needed to go away.

- Alright.

Well, in a rare interview on mainstream media, governor DeSantis told CBS's Nora O'Donnell this week that former President Trump, who faces 91 felony charges, would have a hard time winning next year's election.

- So I didn't think even before all this, the former president shouldn't run again.

I mean, I think that there's too many voters who, he's a deal breaker for them.

- I mean Nikki Haley says, Americans won't vote for a convicted criminal.

Do you agree with that?

- I think the chance of getting elected president after being convicted of a felony is as close to zero as you can get.

- Danny is the governor right?

And it looks like for President Trump is on the road to winning that nomination.

Is Ron DeSantis right about this?

- I'm a big Ron DeSantis fan.

I think he was a right governor at the right time.

I'm a big Trump supporter as well and I definitely supported him in the general election.

But prior to him running, when he got in the race, I was a Jeb Bush supporter and I like Jeb a whole lot.

But how many people at that time in 2016 underestimated Donald Trump?

I think the governor right now is underestimating Donald Trump again, to his detriment.

Right now the polls I was looking at this morning, Quinnipiac, I think has Trump in the primary at 62% and DeSantis at 12%.

These indictments have just further emboldened Donald Trump has emboldened his supporters and which I would count myself among them, to see this as a political witch hunt.

There's people around the world that even say that as well.

So, is a conviction going to change that?

It might, but honestly I don't think so.

I think if he's convicted, that's gonna bring his base out even stronger and he will win the primary.

Now winning the general may be a different thing.

- Fentrice you- - I have to agree.

- Oh, go ahead Mike.

- I'm sorry.

I have to agree with Danny a hundred percent.

I saw a piece today from a conservative religious organization, pray, stand and vote.

And they interviewed the people and asked them about the convictions.

Would it make them more likely to vote for Trump or less?

And everybody they interviewed said more likely.

Having said that though, there was an AP story that came out this week that said 64% of Americans would not vote for Trump regardless of the convictions.

And I don't understand how anybody could think that people who didn't vote for Trump last time would now go vote for Trump in 2024.

So I think he will get the nomination and I think, and I will say, honestly, I pray that he does not win the election.

- Fentrice what's your take on...

I wanna ask you about Danny's point.

Danny says look, these charges against former President Trump are a political witch hunt.

What do you think?

- No, not so much.

Particularly when you look at what happened in Georgia and you had the sitting president at the time calling officials in Georgia saying, I need you to find some votes.

That's fraud and sounds like felony to me, full stop.

I don't know how this is going to impact the ultimate outcome of the election though.

I think if Trump is the nominee, he loses the general because what we saw both in 2020 and in 2022, in the midterms was a rejection of extremism.

I don't think any of us have any problem with there being, conservative perspectives and more liberal perspectives.

I think all of that is great to have in the mix.

But what America is experiencing is extremism fatigue and they're tired of being pulled along by this former president who just wants to take 'em on ride that's so wild.

- All right.

Let's do one more topic.

NBC News reported this week that Florida school districts removed about 300 books from school library shelves last school year.

That's according to a new list of removed or discontinued materials that was quietly made public by the state's Department of Education late last month.

- [Narrator 2] The removals were prompted by more than 1200 objections raised by activist individuals or parents of public school students.

The discontinued titles include dozens of books containing LGBTQ themes or characters including the award-winning memoirs, 'Gender Queer' and 'All Boys Aren't Blue'.

As well as the illustrated children's books, 'A Day in the Life of Marlon Buno' and 'And Tango Makes Three'.

Other books on the list include Tony Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, 'Beloved' Bernard Malamud's, national book winning novel, 'The Fixer' and Margaret Atwood's Booker prize winning novel 'The Testaments' Manatee's District removed the third most books from Mitch Shelves last year 25, only Clay and Martin Counties removed more.

- Dawn I think we're only gonna have time for you to answer this question, but should we be concerned about 300 books being removed across the state or is this what should be done to protect our kids?

- Well I think it's up to the taxpayers in that district.

I can tell you in Pinellas County in the 22/23 school year, we removed zero books.

We had a couple of objections, but we followed our process, we followed due process and the books were then reestablished.

And sometimes books do need to be put into certain categories to be age appropriate for children based on their content.

And I don't disagree with that.

There is very specific law that states that gives us the guidance that we need to follow to understand how to do that.

But at this time we have not removed a single book in Pinellas County.

And I don't agree with banning books.

My daughter is a librarian in Pinellas County, my daughters are extremely well read.

I have never censored what they read but that's a parent's choice.

So like I said, I can speak to Pinellas County and I'm very proud to be working in that county with the people that I am.

- Okay.

Well before we go, what other news stories should we be paying attention to?

Fentrice your other big story.

- Property insurance.

Property insurance rates are on the rise, I know we're all feeling it.

But there's a report that's been released that property rates with citizens is about to increase.

So there's a multi-billion dollar bailout that was just given by the Florida Republicans in the legislature to the insurance industry, didn't work.

- $3 Billion?

- 3 billion.

- Danny, your other big story.

- Well I was following a story down south in Indian River County.

The Indian River School Board apparently was being a little bit criticized by one of their tweets that they had not too long ago.

So they decided to just completely privatize, where you have to ask to join their Twitter account.

This is a public institution, a government in the state of Florida that has protected and locked down their tweets.

Me personally, we live in a state that has full sunshine and our government should not do that.

I reached out to the ACLU of Florida, which on their website talks against this.

I've reached out to the school board and I've reached out to the county commission down there as well as our state reps.

I've not heard buckets about it and that's very disappointing to me.

- Alright, and Dawn your other big story.

- I don't know if it's a big story, but as far as school boards are concerned, there's a referendum coming up on the 20... the next ballot, sorry.

For whether or not school board should go from a nonpartisan seat to a partisan seat.

- [Rob] And what's your take?

What do you recommend?

- I would like to see it stay nonpartisan because I don't think schools should be politicized.

- Alright.

And Mike, your other big story.

- Well, we're talking about the Surgeon General, besides his $250,000 salary from the state, he gets almost another quarter of a million dollars from the University of Florida.

I made a public records request and asked for the classes he teaches and the office hours he has, and they said, there is nothing responsive to your request, meaning he doesn't have any.

So I said, what does he do for his money?

And they said well, he conducts research and supervises it.

So I asked again, in another public records request, what research has he supervised or has he taken part in?

And again they said, there's nothing responsive to your request.

So he's getting almost a quarter of a million dollars on top of his $250,000 salary for doing nothing.

- I think we were wrong To label you a retired reporter, Mike.

Thank you all for a great show and thank you for watching.

Send us your comments at ftwwedu.org and like us on Facebook.

you can view this in past shows online at wedu.org or on the PBS app.

And 'Florida This Week' is now available as a podcast and from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend and Happy Rosh Hashanah.

(outro music) - [Narrator 1] 'Florida This Week' is a production of WEDU, who is solely responsible for its content.