DeSantis And Florida Republicans Finalize Plan To Punish Schools For Protecting Kids

Republicans in Florida, led by right wing governor Ron DeSantis, are finalizing a plan that would punish school districts that defied the governor and put mask mandates in place for students. Florida had a larger proportion of COVID deaths compared to larger states with similar case numbers, and those who actually worked to slow the spread are now being punished by our right wing authoritarian government. But, as usual, it is the children that will suffer from this decision, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The Republican controlled Florida legislature is currently working out their details for their school budgets for the coming year. And as part of their punishment of the 12 school districts that defied Ron DeSantis and put mask mandates in place to protect their children, they're going to be starving those school of roughly $200 million of our Florida taxpayer money. They're taking it away from those schools and giving it to the 55 other school districts in the state that blindly followed the stupid advice of our idiot governor and of course, left kids vulnerable to COVID. 12 school districts are being punished. Now don't worry too much, right? Because the Republicans who again, control our state legislature, they've already come out and they said, listen, everybody's budget for this coming year is going to increase, including those 12 school districts.

What we are doing is just increasing theirs less because that's their punishment. So even though it's school districts in the largest districts here in the state of Florida, I mean, listen to this Alachua, Brevard, Broward, Duval, Hillsboro, Indian River, Leon, Miami-Dade, Orange Palm Beach, Sarasota, and Volusia. If you're not familiar with Florida, those are the places you've heard about, right? If you've ever traveled to Florida, like on a vacation, those are probably the places that you went without even realizing it and a lot of them do suffer from extreme poverty. So the additional boost in school funding would be wonderful. I know Leon county specifically, you know, over there with Tallahassee, the state capital, um, they desperately needed that extra money. And of course they're being robbed of it by the Republican, you know, right wing authoritarians that run the state of Florida now.

And the worst part about all of this is the only people who suffer from this are the teachers and the students. Like that's it. The teachers and the students will suffer from not having this additional funding because again, all they wanted to do was protect themselves and protect the kids. Nobody got hurt. Nobody passed out from carbon dioxide poisoning, as Republicans tell us. And of course, predictably, these schools actually saw lower cases than schools that did not have mask mandates in place. So the masks worked and I think that's probably what off Ron DeSantis more than anything. That these schools were right. He was wrong. So he is using his political power to rob them of money, which is going to starve these children of proper educations and of course, it's a all going to fall back onto the teachers. If you do not personally know anyone in the education field, anybody who is a K through 12 educator, let me go ahead and fill you in on things.

Because I know a lot of them, plus I'm married to one, I spend a couple hundred bucks every single month buying supplies, not just for my wife's classroom, but for her school. I do what I can to help out the other teachers as well and of course they do the same thing. I mean, I'm buying four or five boxes of copy paper for that school every single month. Paper towels, pens, pencils, all kinds of things. We don't get reimbursed for that because, by the way, thanks to the 2017 Republican tax cuts.