The Books They Don’t Want Our Children to Read
Growing up, I didn’t have books that helped me understand who I was. People rarely talked openly about being gay,
Read more
Hillsborough County Schools
Birds of a Feather
Ken Gay’s latest supporter graphic features Republican state representatives Danny Alvarez, Traci Koster and Michael Owen. Once you look at their education records, the endorsements require very little explanation. Alvarez and Koster backed Florida’s expansion of private-school scholarships and HB 1069, with its restrictions on sexual-orientation and gender-identity instruction and pronoun use. Owen has supported similar school-choice policies and legislation expanding religious expression in public schools.
The consequences of those LGBTQ-related policies are harder to shrug off as another Tallahassee culture-war hobby. Trevor Project research found that LGBTQ+ students attending schools with even one anti-LGBTQ+ policy reported higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicide attempts. Its 2023 research also found lower suicide-attempt rates among students with affirming school supports, including teachers who respected transgender and nonbinary students’ pronouns. Apparently, treating children with dignity has measurable benefits. Who knew?
So “birds of a feather” seems an apt description of the policy overlap. The same group supporting Gay has repeatedly backed moving education dollars toward private alternatives while supporting restrictions that fall particularly hard on LGBTQ+ students. The question behind the endorsements is worth examining: what does that agenda mean inside a public-school system charged with educating every child who walks through its doors?
Read more
Brittany Lyssy’s School-Board Training Network Deserves a Closer Look
Brittany Lyssy cites her work with the Leadership Institute’s School Board Leaders Program as part of her education-policy experience. A closer look at that program shows a national conservative network built around recruiting, training, and supporting school-board candidates, with direct connections to Moms for Liberty and to policy resources from Hillsdale College and the Heritage Foundation.
One connection deserves particular attention. Bridget Ziegler, an early figure in Moms for Liberty, served in leadership of the same Leadership Institute school-board program where Lyssy worked on communications, policy analysis, ethics, and governance. Public records do not show that Lyssy belonged to Moms for Liberty or adopted every position promoted within that network, but the institutional ties are clear enough to warrant scrutiny.
The larger question is what parts of that philosophy Lyssy would bring to Hillsborough. The full article follows the connections among the Leadership Institute, Moms for Liberty, Hillsdale, Ziegler, and Lyssy’s own policy background, then asks what voters should examine before deciding how much those ties matter.
Read more