Ron DeSantis: Watch what he says to this reporter about the Pandemic...

again and baker i think we were here a couple of months ago we were doing we're doing some vaccine drive and we have commissioner corcoran here department of education sherry rawlerson the superintendent here thomas hill the principal we have representatives court bird and chuck brannan are also here with us today and you know last summer we really felt strongly that every parent in florida needed to have the ability to send their child to school in person and so commissioner corcoran and i worked very hard we also worked with many of the superintendents and if you remember you know now everyone says the kids should be in school that was not the case then okay people were fear-mongering media in particular was fear-mongering some of these idiot experts were saying it was dangerous for kids without any data without any evidence and in fact the evidence and the data was very clear uh by the end of last spring in places like europe uh where they had had kids in school face to face and so uh we really believed that we had to cut through the um uh all the all the storms and all the nonsense and stand with our parents and stand with our students we wouldn't have been able to do that if we didn't have a lot of folks like the superintendent and like all these teachers in florida who wanted to get the kids back in school because they knew how important it was um in fact i remember talking with sherry they were one of the first uh districts to open uh to be i think it was early august right early august and you know normally it's that not all of our districts normally open then so so this is one of the first ones i think they sent like one of the corporate media outlets sent some reporter down they were trying to make fun of baker like all these yokeals or having kids go in school how crap how crazy are these people right the crazy people are the ones that are vaccinated still wearing six masks in new york city i mean to be honest with you so we felt uh that this was important uh sherry felt that it was important and i remember on day one at baker county you had over and we gave the parents the option we said look if you want to opt for it for virtual uh remote that's that's that's fine but we wanted the schools need to be open and we want to give options for everybody to be able to uh to do it and on day one in baker county you had what over 90 percent 94 of the kids were in person face to face on day one in baker county and so that's pretty incredible [Applause] and so we look and even to this day you have play enclaves in our country where parents do not have the right or the ability to send their kids to school in person this is the last day of school in baker county 180 days face to face they've done it they did a normal basically a normal school year and it was successful and you have places throughout this country where they still have the doors shut on on families and these are mostly more lower middle-income families you know the wealthy the wealthy people who close schools send their kids to face to face usually in private schools you see it all the time just like some of these politicians that lock down their states or their cities they all end up in florida enjoying us they criticize florida then they end up getting their their rumps down here for some r r somehow you know it's very strange that that happens so uh i think that uh you know what we did and i've told a bunch of folks superintendents and teachers throughout the state but i think people who have been i mean how long have you been in education 35 years and and so of all the times you've been in education and we have people with a lot of experience i'm not sure you could make more of a difference than this year under the circumstances and had we closed the schoolhouse doors had we not let the kids in the damage that that would have done you could be the best teacher in the world the best principal in the world the best superintendent in the world i don't think we would have been able to recover from that and you're going to see lasting damage in other parts of the country for people who didn't do the right thing and so before covid we believed it was really important to to support our classroom teachers the budget i signed during covit a lot of people forgot about it because it was all within the context of of cobit being front and center and everything but we had last year in 2020 one of our main initiatives was to increase the average minimum salary for school teachers in the state of florida we were in the bottom half of states we wanted to get uh up closer to the top and the result of that was 500 million dollars dedicated to that different school districts you know different school districts are different places based on cost of living uh but in baker county that has ended up what was the the increase like six thousand dollars um just under six thousand dollars for for increasing the average minimum salary so we think that that's really important especially as we look to uh get good high college graduates and and recruit people to be able to come and do this so we did that we were able to do it again this year in the budget that i'm going to sign very shortly and we actually got even more money for that and so it was a it was a good approach the way the legislature did it we said this average minimum is important because it really incentivizes a broader pool of people to cont to consider going into this but we also said once you hit a certain average minimum salary you know the rest of the money you know can go to some of the more experienced teachers so you did get increases there um and so we're really really proud of doing that and we think that that's a really good approach and the fact that we were able to sign that during covid with all the challenges we had would have been very easy to veto it and say you know what next year we'll try we just you know we have too much going on it's going to be hard maybe we can't afford it we decided we'd make it work we did it um and it worked and then now we're back again uh doubling down on it which is really really good and so so we're proud of that that was before covid that was just something that we think is important for education in florida but given how florida responded to this uh given how we had schools open how you know it would bother me because i talked to folks you know like sherry and i talked to other teachers and they were saying you know they we need to get the kids back i mean these kids are not the virtual is not working we got to get them back but you know you had a lot of these unions particularly in other part of the country they wanted no school i mean that's what they were pushing for but the superintendents in florida the principals the teachers overwhelmingly wanted to get back uh wanted to give the kids the ability to learn face to face because they understood how important it was and so because of that you know i asked the legislature to step up to the plate recognize a job well done and authorize bonuses of a thousand dollars for every principal and classroom teacher throughout the state of florida for school districts and for public charter schools and i'm happy to report they answered the call they supported our bonus initiative and so when we signed the budget coming up very shortly we will have in law additional and apart from the the money for pay that we're doing anyways an additional increase of a thousand dollars for bonuses for all principals and for classroom teachers and so that's a really good thing and so we're um we're going to continue to uh to put points on the board on the ha on behalf of floridians we're proud that we got the bonuses through we understand it was a very a unique set of circumstances that many of our schools had to do so i want to thank everybody here in baker county who who helped make it happen look i also want to thank a lot of the parents too because i remember talking with a lot of superintendents the parents were so thankful they were bringing a gift i don't know if they did it here i know in some ways they're bringing the teachers gifts and everything because they were so happy to be able to do and it's not just so they can work i know many obviously we have a lot of working parents and so that's just the facts of life and it's not even just the academics which is obviously important but these kids need to be around their friends you know they need to be developing and they need to be able to have this and i think the parents really understood what was missing better than anybody with the virtual uh learning and so uh so they were very appreciative and i know parents throughout florida were very supportive of everything that went on and i know that they are going to be able to do it i um you know i did jump the gun a little bit with my remarks because i was supposed to be the second speaker i want the principal i want principal hill to come up we are going to do a prayer and a pledge um and then i will kick it over to to our other speakers and so it's great to be in baker county and why don't you go ahead and do it first coming up we will have miss karis richardson a student at baker county middle school who will provide the invocation buy your heads dear lord we thank you for the opportunity you've given us today i thank you for our amazing county and school system you've blessed us with we thank you for our phenomenal governor you've given us and we thank you for the great school year we've had in jesus name we pray amen amen and now another student of ours mr davion dean [Applause] attention salute pledge i pledge of allegiance united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice okay i want to thank you all for coming today i am thomas hill principal of baker county middle school this is an early dismissal for for us today we get out at 1205. this is also a full moon it is also the last day of the school year and we have all of you here today thank you so very much for being here 179 days ago we began a journey that was full of uncertainty other states even some districts within our great state were hesitant to start the year john maxwell states the greater the inaction of leaders the more opportunities they lose because opportunities are always surrounded by uncertainty all good things include uncertainty and overcoming uncertainty requires courage the leaders here today governor desantis commissioner corcoran and superintendent rollerson have exemplified that very same courage to which mr maxwell was referring in june 2020 commissioner corcoran in the florida department of education established a set of goals for the state school systems we were charged with developing and implementing a school reopening plan that addressed the following keeping florida's entire education family safe and healthy instilling confidence in floridians to return to school campuses safely and ready to succeed focusing on student-centered outcomes elevating educators and equipping them for success enabling parents of school-aged children to return to the workforce increasing floridians economic mobility and agility and in all situations showing compassion and grace in decision making with these aspirations in mind the baker county school district in partnership with the local health department created and executed an innovative reopening plan that has successfully achieved these vital goals this accomplishment did not come without overcoming unique never faced before challenges for many in our community and our state this has been an extremely arduous journey through the heroic endeavors of our teachers support staff and health department and our entire community we conclude our school year today we have no students in quarantine and well over 62 000 minutes of face-to-face instruction for the vast majority of our students thanks to the leadership of governor desantis commissioner corcoran and superintendent rollerson we celebrate the conclusion of a most prosperous year that they so courageously began back on august 10th thank you all so much for being here today okay we'd like to welcome up the commissioner of education thank you first uh i just want to echo what the governor and the principal were saying you go back in time and superintendent ralphson can remember there was times that governor and i would look out our offices and there was you know protesters building mock cemeteries with fake tombstones graveyards you know just telling we're doing a disastrous thing but what we did throughout that whole process and led by the governor leadership's everything and and i'll just juxtapose two states you got one state where the guy didn't dig into the facts and find out and call other countries and see what was going on and and what the data was which our governor was doing reading everything looking at everything you have another governor who's just publishing a book getting paid five million dollars his school still still aren't open in many parts children are denied that whole year of learning it's it's not you look at these other states that are still to this day we're completing 180 days of a school year with children safely successfully and they're still in america schools as the governor said where you can't parents can even send their kids and you look at it and you're like it's not just heartbreaking it's not just wrong it's not it's literally criminal what we're doing to kids in this other states in this country is literally criminal and it'll take not years maybe decades or maybe not at all to recover from that kind of a loss and if florida was the leader hands down no question the whole world knows it now in in reopening and getting back to normal and and looking at the facts and making wise decisions like you're saying with john maxwell baker county if not number one i don't i got to be careful because there's a 67 year but a baker county absolutely led the way the the state of florida we opened up the fastest of any state with more children and face-to-face instruction we have more kids in face-to-face instruction you know in october than most states combined several states combined but baker county opened face-to-face instruction 94 percent of students in face-to-faction all the teachers came back that was the other thing all you know what about the teachers what about the teachers you know in baker county all every teachers wanted to be with their kids they wanted to have that moment and and that's why this bonus that the governor um fought for hundreds of millions of dollars for teachers and principals it's so important and it's so well deserved what we found out in america uh what we found in florida um i have six children all public school kids trust me i wanted schools open i might have been a little selfish in the decision but i wanted schools to open but but what we found out was that our teachers our education community it's the backbone of society when we got the schools right and everyone was functioning and parents could go back to work and they didn't have to worry about daycare or or watching out for their children or where they were they were in that great structure of our schools everything that the governor was able to open up every other aspect of of the state and great things happened and and the one normalcy in a crazy world for little kids whether you're high school student or elementary that normalcy is when they walked in and that one constant that one thing that made sense when everything else around them where they went to publix and they were everyone's masked up or they a park and people are saying separate the kids all these crazy things going around them they walked into a school and that one constant that one normal that one great fantastic thing was there was their teacher there was their principal and it just bought such a sense of normalcy certainly for my kids um and so giving another bonus to these uh teachers it's not just well deserved they they are the backbone our society um and our principles and we can't thank them enough and it's just a great thing um i will close though um and he quoted john maxwell i you know there's a great book by general mcchrystal and he talks about leadership is everything and he gives this example he has you know 10 kernels and he has one kernel over the best unit and he has another kernel over the worst unit and he says if i switch those two kernels and 30 to 60 days the best unit is the worst unit and the worst unit is the best unit because leadership is everything we are and you've said it well principle completely and utterly blessed to be led by not a good governor just a fantastic governor who has steered us through probably some of the darkest days our country has seen and here we are standing where it is better in baker you are face to face for 180 days and and i will tell you you have second to none one of the finest superintendents um and we did work together and we talked all the time we met um and and we did we're going to do the right thing but we're going to do it with compassion and grace and nobody exemplifies that better than jerry rollerson so thank you for all your great work too thank you all [Applause] all right it's afternoon now so i'm gonna change my script good afternoon governor desantis and commissioner corcoran the baker county school district welcomes you one of our favorite mottos if you've heard maybe you haven't heard but it's better in baker you both coming to our school district today has validated that it truly is veteran baker i have proof for you to wear when you travel to other places [Laughter] i hope that makes you smile when you see that badge thank you for coming and for acknowledging the hard work of our teachers staff administration and our school board we know that coming back to school on time with our children face to face with their teachers was the best gift we could possibly ever give to our children we knew that they could not lose another precious moment of their education we are also so grateful for a community and school family who also believed that this was best for our children this was evident with the 94 percent coming back day one on the scheduled start date we have the best teachers and staff in the united states of america and our families knew what a difference that our schools made in the lives of their children i know y'all are here to celebrate us today but i would like to express to both of you how grateful we are for your leadership your support and allowing us to get back to our classrooms has impacted every child in baker county our children are your children and we are so thankful for your leadership that has guided the way for us to give back to our children their schools their classrooms and their ability to make wonderful memories that will last their entire lifetime we have had an amazing school year and we have seen students soar academically and extracurricular and i have a sweet note that was sent to me this week that i'd like to share with you a fourth grade class was doing the memory book as we do at the end of the year and they were doing some final writing prompts and one of the pages it was a reflection that it said how did you become a better math student this year we are going to love this the student's response was to see my teacher face to face and not on a computer oh wow this out of the mouths of babes the student recognized how important it was for her to be with her teacher i also received a note from a parent after a beautiful graduation for the class of 2021 her comment was not only is it better in baker but love is always the better way we love our students and we are so blessed to have been given the privilege of loving them and educating them we will never ever take this for granted in closing i would like to share with you a scripture that i gave to the class of 2021 at our baccalaureate service and i would like to give the governor and the commissioner this scripture this is for you governor desantis and this is for you commissioner corcoran and i want to encourage you as you continue to serve our state and our communities and i know y'all quoted john maxwell a great writer but i'm going to reference the greatest writer our lord jesus christ galatians 6 9 he said let us not grow weary in doing good for we will reap in due season if we don't give up god bless you both as you continue to do great things for our children and our communities god bless you both and never forget everybody ready one two three it's better in baker so we also have two teachers we have wendy smith is a third grade teacher and angela callahan 8th grade teacher so wendy do you want to come up and say a few things [Applause] it was an honor for me this year to be selected as baker county's district teacher of the year and today is an exciting day in our school district when we're able to come together and celebrate our successful year when i think back about this year the same word the same thought keeps coming to my mind and the words thankful i'm so thankful to work in the baker county school district where leaders supported face face-to-face instruction and allowed us to begin our school year as scheduled i'm thankful to the parents who entrusted us with their children knowing that we were providing providing the best education in the classroom and that we would do everything within our power to keep them safe and this year as a third grade teacher i'm especially thankful for hugs we weren't sure if we would get those this year or not but hugs were coming from students who were excited every day to be at school they were learning they were growing and they were building those relationships so i know today's our last day i know we're excited about summer but i promise that we will all look back on this year and be thankful for everything we've accomplished together thank you thank you [Applause] last summer the baker county school district had to make one of the most important yet difficult decisions that it has ever faced as a mother a teacher and the president of the baker county education association i am so thankful that our district chose to open our doors fully for in-person instruction on august 10th it was absolutely the best decision for our kids and i say that because two of those kids were my own i am grateful that my own children as well as my students had the opportunity to learn in an authentic learning environment they were able to go into their classrooms and be with their teachers and their peers i am filled with gratitude that our district provided my senior and his classmates a real graduation ceremony and gave them those lifelong memories that were taken by this pandemic from the class before us our school shutdown last march had a devastating toll on my youngest son he was a he was a vibrant first grader last march but came back to school in august as a shy and anxious second grader the first time his teacher called on him he hid under his desk getting emotional and he refused to speak for days being at home for five months completely robbed him of the ability to interact with others took away all of his personality and his confidence he regressed socially and academically my child needed to be in his classroom with his peers with his teachers all of our children needed to be in their classrooms with their peers and their teachers our district and our union made that happen coveted 19 is absolutely real and has devastated far too many families in florida but i truly believe that our district's approach to reopening our schools during this pandemic helped to eliminate some of that devastation we provided the safest environment possible for our students our teachers and our staff we allowed our students to be children all while giving them the best educational experience possible the one that they deserve because the baker county education association and the baker county school district chose to put what was best for our kids at the forefront of our reopening plan we have proven to our state it really is better in baker maybe you could be the union head in chicago in l.a and get get those schools open so well look we're really excited um we're proud of what they did in baker we're proud of the uh the teacher compensation momentum we have and we're proud of these thousand dollar bonuses for the principals and for the teachers uh we think that um you know when the schools are open when people are working hard and putting the kids and families first you know we want to reward that sacrifice and so we're doing that and we're not just doing the teachers we're doing all the law enforcement thousand dollar bonuses as well for the sworn law enforcement and first responders throughout the state so that's over a hundred and some thousand uh people in that bucket and then there's 170 174 000 teachers and principals that are going to get the thousand dollar bonus in the state of florida so we're gonna be signing that budget um you know hopefully within the next couple weeks we still got there's just a lot of provisions we got to go through we're working on it uh and then um you know we'll work to get these uh get these checks out um you know hopefully we can uh you know turn that around you know over the summer uh we're working hard on it i've already have guys hard at work but it's a lot of checks so we got to do it right and with that take a couple questions so that was not something that the legislature received favorably uh that's just the reality and their view was and that's understanding well wait a minute we've put hundreds of thousands of people back to work and they thought it was unfair uh to do that so look at the end of the day we have a big diverse state as you know it's rare that in any corner of the state i will hear the exact same thing on an issue on this issue though with businesses every corner of the state has job openings we have almost a half a million job openings throughout the state of florida and i think in reality it'd be even more than that because once they can start filling those i think some of these businesses could expand because of all the good things that are going on in the state of florida so we're in a much different situation than we were a year ago fortunately for us i mean look you'd rather the problem be too many job openings then not people able to get jobs but we are back i think to where the economy's performing very well there's a lot of job openings and so we can transition back to a pre-pandemic construct on that and i'm confident that there are jobs available out there and you know look it's the fact is you know florida we said you have a right to work we say these businesses have had a right to be open and the fact that we had that environment has really paid dividends for us not just in terms of the opportunity for people to work and and the businesses that survived and thrived uh but just look at our state revenues pouring in i mean these revenues are pouring in faster than anyone can even keep count of just from doing the budget that the legislature passed in april based on a second week of april revenue estimate we're going to end up with being a billion and a 2 billion dollars in additional revenue that was not even forecast and that's just simply a function of the the dynamics and the economy being very strong so we want to keep that going i want to transition even more people uh back into the workforce want to make sure that these businesses are able to expand and we've got some you know some of these industries like the restaurants some of these restaurants are doing great but they can only be open five days a week because they don't have the staff to be able to to fill it out so i think that there's a lot of great opportunities now for people no one thought a year ago we would be uh having that problem i think people were predicting that florida was going to be in a real hole i always had faith but at the end of the day you know you never know how these things are going to turn out but i felt that if we just dug in that that we would be all right and and i think not only we all right you know we're the envy of of the country and not just the country i mean i get correspondents to our office from all over the world people are um uh look to florida who are locked down in ireland or some of these other places and so so we're proud of what we've been able to do yes ma'am yes ma'am there's not any appetite in the legislature for it yep so looking beyond baker county there are other school districts that are also announcing they are reopening schools this upcoming school year and making that optional inside the classroom including duval county schools announced that change yesterday what would you like to say about that there should not be mandatory mass for kids if a parent wants their kid to wear it i mean i personally wouldn't do that as a parent but i think that that's fine but to force other kids and here's the thing baker never required the kids to wear masks and they had no difference in covid performance than the places that had in fact there's a study that just came out we're gonna i think richard's gonna put it out i was done by a number of really great researchers they looked at massachusetts new york and florida the schools and they found no statistical difference in covitt outbreaks based on non-pharmaceutical interventions mask mandates distancing you know some of these places will put up plexiglas and and they're like these kids are like in these little individual pods so there's a lot of things that were done and honestly i was not necessarily supportive of any of that but i understood at the beginning of the year a lot of people were worried but clearly the evidence is in on this and we need to have a normal school year uh for our students baker had a normal school year be i mean there's challenges but they basically the kids were able to have a normal environment and that is really really important uh for these kids upbringings and so i would say and and the department of education has put out information on this the data is very very clear on this and so that is really the way forward for the state of florida so i'm glad duvall made that decision yes state sir what's being done to from the state level to help the district and an update on graduation rates anytime we have a district that needs state support we have turnaround money that comes to him and and we do but but i don't baker i don't know where you're saying that if you're talking about baker county yeah the threshold for graduation rates here oh yeah we'll have all that data but we do have data which is again it's an amazing thing not only did we have these kids in face-to-face instruction across the state um and other states aren't doing any of it we're still doing the assessments because we do know even when we had baker as a per you know the creamed creme de la creme of open and face-to-face instruction what we had a lot of and i you know the governor and i said it over and over it was way too much in our opinion it was we had kids quarantined you know and they would come in and they'd kick out a hundred kids because one had it and they're out for 14 days in the early parts of the so so the great thing is um we've done been doing the assessments all this last few months and we're at about 94 95 percent on the writings already back in when you have that kind of data we'll be able to really go in and with all of these federal monies we're doing an intensive summer program intensive uh rising kindergarten program all of those things graduation rates we'll be able to and we'll be able to focus it and identify exactly who needs it because we've been so successful in our assessments i mean honestly just think about it whatever the underlying rate is it's going to be better if the kids are actually in school face-to-face when you have the virtual i mean a teacher can't they don't know what's going on in there they can't serve that mentorship role like they can if the students coming in every day because it's not just the academic i mean if a student you you know the teachers see if there's something wrong with the student they can be there they're one of the people that our communities really depend on to to identify students who may be having problems at their homes all this this there's a whole bunch of things so i really worry about the ones who didn't have access to in person because people have totally dropped off the radar as a result of the fallout and some of the policies that were implemented you know with kovid um that is going to be tough to unring that bell i got to get on the plane and go to our next stop but god bless baker county and thank you all for what you've done and oh yeah we want to do that thousand dollar check oh my gosh all right all right hopefully by the next school year of this these checks will be uh awesome we'll be done so um

Channel: LiveNOW from FOX

Views: 274,381

Keywords: Ron DeSantis, DeSantis, Ron DeSantis Florida, Florida Governor

Id: EN6WtPoMhLE

Length: 35min 44sec (2144 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021