Years ago, I was getting what remained of my hair cut in Prescott, Arizona. My barber was telling me about the old days in Arizona, and that he had grown up in the old mining town of Jerome (once known as “the most Wicked Town in the West”) before the town died in the 1950s when the massive copper mine closed. He told me that as a young man he had assisted his older brother in tearing down four abandoned homes and hauling the lumber down the mountain to build a house and a barn, where his brother still lived. The barber asked me “Do you know how hard it was to get the permits to do that?” I responded, “No sir, how hard was it?” He replied:
It wasn’t hard at all; we didn’t need a permit back in those days. In those days we were free!
Can we live free these days? In 2018, I wrote an introductory post as executive editor of this blog, which concluded as follows:
Funding for public education is guaranteed in the Florida Constitution and is as close to a permanent institution as you get in American society. It’s here to stay. Florida, however, has the chance not just to practice the form of public education, but to fulfill its actual promise. Much divides our society, but Americans still unite on crucial issues, including education. We desperately want an education system that gives students the knowledge, skills and habits needed for success and to responsibly exercise democratic citizenship. We – left, right and center – commonly and fiercely desire a system of schooling which serves as an engine of class mobility. Florida has moved the needle in this direction by setting families free to pursue opportunities that would otherwise be denied to them. More of this is needed and the next step will be to develop a consensus around setting educators free as well.
More on that later.
Grim challenges lie ahead for Florida. I’ll lay out the latest on some of them in coming posts. We should never, however, make the mistake of underestimating human ingenuity – and especially of betting against a wildly inventive state in the world’s most creative nation. Your challenges will be great, but you have been more than equal to them thus far.
Go and amaze us. Where Florida leads, others will follow.
A recent article in Politicio called ‘Microschools’ could be the next big school choice push. Florida is on the cutting edge made it clear that over the past six years Florida has done a great deal to free teachers to create and control their own schools to pursue their vision of a high-quality education. This is incredibly exciting, but great promise and peril lie ahead. From the Politicio article:
Florida appears to be one of the few states so far to ease restrictions for private schools, joining Utah in passing a law that clears a path for more microschools — a move opponents fear strips power from local communities.
While Florida’s law doesn’t explicitly address microschooling, the new policy permits private schools to use facilities owned or leased by a library, community service organization, museum, performing arts venue, theater, cinema or church under the property’s current zoning and land-use designations. The private school does not have to pursue any rezoning or seek a special exception or land-use change to operate in those spaces.
Now, I live thousands of miles away from Florida in a distant and pleasant patch of cactus. I am, however, willing to wager that, sadly, Florida probably is not immune from the phenomenon of petty little dictators. The “little Platoons” that de Tocqueville wrote so approvingly of find themselves hamstrung today by the need for traffic studies and HOA regulations.
A golden age of schools controlled by Florida teachers and shaped by the voluntary associations of Florida families beckons. The same reason many of us find this exciting, others will see it as terrifying: because it is outside the control of control freaks. Bossy McBossypants and Petty L. Tyrants of various sorts will not be pleased. All the better in my view. Give them something to cry about.
Politicio certainly has this right: Florida is on the leading edge. I will simply reiterate to my Florida friends: Go forth and amaze us. Where Florida leads, others will follow.
