Undocumented immigrants in Florida won’t be able to attend public universities if a sweeping new education bill passes the state Legislature.
The 32-page SB 1052, filed Monday by Vero Beach Republican Sen. Erin Grall, instructs public colleges and universities to exclusively admit students who are “citizen[s] of the United States” or “lawfully present therein.”
It also would prevent migrants illegally in the country from participating in state-funded adult general education programs, which include classes for GED and English as a second language that help “adult learners gain the knowledge and skills they need to enter and succeed in postsecondary education,” as defined on the Department of Education’s website.
This builds off of a provision in a Feb. 2025 law that nixed all in-state tuition for undocumented college students.
Grall’s bill comes amid a crackdown on undocumented immigration that surged in early 2025 when President Donald Trump re-took office. Trump’s administration soon imposed a deportation quota for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, increased the cost for certain work visas, and supported states like Florida that are building their own detention centers.
Florida became the first and only state to require all 67 counties to enter into 287(g) agreements, which are state- and local-level partnerships with ICE.
SB 1052, which doesn’t have a companion measure in the House yet, also would strike the requirement for a gender-equity plan in intercollegiate athletics.
Although the measure still demands universities comply with the Title IX prohibition on discrimination in athletic programs, the Florida College System would not have to draw up plans to consider equity in sports offerings, participation, availability of facilities, scholarship offerings, and funds allocated for administration, recruitment, comparable coaching, publicity and promotion, and other support costs.
This would rewrite a 2001 state law requiring these plans as extensions of Title IX protections.
Grall’s bill includes a waiver certain tuition fees for active members of the Florida State Guard.
Grall’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The declaration lists a series of principles such as parents being the primary educators of their children and public education money always following the children.
The principles also call for:
— Schools to be fully transparent with parents.
— Schools to prioritize proven teaching methods “rooted in foundational subjects over fads or experimental teaching methods.”
— Education to be “grounded in objective truth, free from ideological fads,” while also being focused on “America’s founding principles and roots in the broader Western and Judeo-Christian traditions.”
— Students to be prepared for challenges and responsibilities of adulthood and taught “the whole truth about America — its merits and failings — without obscuring that America is a great source of good in the world.”
Also Thursday, the board approved new standards tied to a 2024 law (SB 1264) that requires instruction on the history of communism.
Among other things, students will be asked to compare the Communist Manifesto and the Bill of Rights; communist and socialist thought; the effects of anti-communists on American communism between 1917 and 1956; the harm done by communist espionage; and the roles of anti-communist politicians, including the late President Harry Truman, the late President Richard Nixon, the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee, and the late U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
While at the Freedom Tower in Miami last Friday to mark Victims of Communism Day, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that while America won the Cold War, the communist ideology hasn’t gone away.
“It comes back and it’s repackaged, and they try to do it under various different banners. And so you have to understand what’s at stake here,” DeSantis said.
“I think it’s important to talk about it in a very clear eyed way, the destruction, the lives of 100 million dead at the hands of Marxism, Leninism,” DeSantis said. “But I think it’s also important that we just recognize the whole absurdity of it all, of the whole idea of communism and Marxism, Leninism.”
A bill filed Monday by state Rep. Tom Fabricio would require teachers to take an oath to the Constitution and nonpartisanship.
The bill, HB 147, would require teachers to, “before entering upon the duties of a classroom teacher,” take the oath.
The language is similar to oaths taken by lawyers, doctors, and public officials.
Fabricio, R-Miami Lakes, is an attorney and has been in office since 2020.
Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas sent a letter last month to superintendents after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated. That letter targeted teachers’ social media conduct that he deemed “despicable” and “vile, sanctionable behavior.”
The Legislature and governor in the past few years have also passed laws making illegal teaching about “divisive concepts” and “identity politics.”
Fabricio does not sit on any education committees. He is vice chair of the Ways & Means Committee and sits on the Judiciary Committee, Rules & Ethics Committee, Information Technology Budget & Policy Subcommittee, Natural Resources & Disasters Subcommittee, and the Transportation & Economic Development Budget Subcommittee.
Chapter 876 of Florida statutes require state employees, including those serving on school boards and working for state or county school districts, to take an oath that they are a citizen of Florida and to support the U.S. and Florida constitutions.
Other states require oaths to federal and state constitutions, including California, Georgia, and New York. According to Encyclopedia.com, almost two-thirds of states since 1863 have adopted teacher loyalty oaths.
With state Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas vowing to prevent her from teaching again, an Alachua County teacher is fighting a disciplinary case that includes allegations she presented a certificate to a student that said he was the most likely to “become a dictator.”
Teacher Lauren Watts’ challenge went this week to the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings, where a judge will be assigned to consider it. Watts’ attorneys disputed the state’s allegations, which also included that the teacher’s “conduct embarrassed and disparaged” the student.
“Each of these statements is false, intentionally misleading and not supported by the ‘investigation’ and are, therefore, in dispute,” Watts’ attorneys wrote in a Sept. 12 document known as an “election of rights,” which led to the Department of Education sending the case to the Division of Administrative Hearings on Wednesday.
The Sept. 12 document also took issue with the department’s handling of the case, contending that no “actual investigation was conducted, and no witnesses were sought or interviewed” and that an administrative complaint against Watts was “disseminated publicly via X.com prior to Ms. Watts receiving formal notice of the complaint, investigation, or probable cause determination.”
Kamoutsas issued the administrative complaint Aug. 21, after the student’s mother raised concerns at a State Board of Education meeting. The administrative complaint said that during the 2022-2023 school year, Watts, a social-studies teacher at Gainesville High School, allowed the student to be disparaged by other students when they suggested he was a “Hitler sympathizer.”
The administrative complaint alleged that Watts presented a certificate to the student in front of his peers “proclaiming (the student) the most likely member of the class to become a dictator, based on comments made by (the student) that respondent (Watts) interpreted to be conservative in nature. Respondent’s conduct embarrassed and disparaged (the student).”
The student’s name is redacted in the administrative complaint.
Kamoutsas said during a Sept. 24 State Board of Education meeting that he will “take every necessary action to ensure that this teacher never teaches again.”
Kamoutsas and the Board of Education have clashed with Alachua County school officials on a number of issues, including allegations that the local board has violated First Amendment and parental rights during meetings. During the Sept. 24 State Board of Education meeting, Kamoutsas said state education officials continue “to be concerned about the toxic culture that has infiltrated school board meetings in Alachua County as parents have been targeted simply for voicing their conservative opinions.”
In addition to disputing the allegations, Watts’ attorneys in the Sept. 12 document took issue with Kamoutsas, saying that a statement he made about Watts being prevented from teaching again furthered a “clear unwillingness for the department to provide Ms. Watts the process and impartiality required by law.”
Citing state policy on tenure, elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and the cost of living, Florida faculty laid out their frustrations in a recent survey.
In a Faculty in the South survey conducted by various conferences of the American Association of University Professors, 31% of Florida respondents said they have applied for a job outside of Florida since 2023. That number was 25% among all survey respondents in the South.
The same, 31% of Florida respondents, said they plan to seek employment in another state during the next hiring cycle.
“The governor of Florida threatens at every turn to take funding away so administration at colleges don’t stand up to him or board of education. I no longer have any motivation or creativity to make courses better,” a tenured professor at a public community college wrote.
The survey focused on policy affecting employment, including whether faculty would recommend working in their state to up-and-coming academics, and trends in applications for faculty positions. It included nearly 200 responses from Florida faculty among its nearly 4,000 responses across Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
The survey concluded with an open-ended question asking faculty to provide examples of how “attacks on higher education are directly impacting your work.” It did not report respondents’ identities beyond basic demographics like gender, race, tenure status, years of experience, and type of institution they teach at.
‘Walking on egg shells’
“Students report any classroom discussion they don’t like directly to the Governor’s office. Everyone is afraid all the time,” one woman teaching at a public four-year school wrote. “I have stopped teaching books that might be in any way controversial. I don’t open up general discussion in class but ask only direct questions that will elicit non-controversial answers. I need health insurance so I can’t just quit.”
The state scanning course materials for disfavored viewpoints was a widespread stressor for many faculty.
“Most of the courses I’ve taught for decades now violate state and university mandates,” a man teaching at a Florida tier-one research university said.
As of earlier this year, Florida institutions’ general education courses no longer contained “indoctrinating concepts,” State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues proclaimed in January.
Florida universities have conducted a review, required by a 2022 law, of general education courses to ensure that they do not “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.”
“I’m continually worried that the content of my clases [sic] will be flagged as “DEI” because I am a historian of the Caribbean, a region mostly populated by non-white people,” one professor said.
One women’s studies professor described the effect as “Constant anxiety, walking on egg shells trying to anticipate what would be used against me/us.”
More than a third, 34%, of Florida respondents said administrators have questioned syllabi or curricula choices for their courses. Among all states surveyed, half as many, 17%, indicated administrators questioned their curricula.
One professor said that since the state and federal government have made illegal “a wide range of Constitutionally protected components of speech and expression,” “I must break the law in order to tell the truth. Because I’m hired to tell the truth, and because I’m much more committed to the truth than to the law, I break the law. This means I am expecting to be arrested in front of a classroom any day, for actions that are illegal only as a result of the right-wing fad of the most recent decade.”
Nearly three in four, 71%, of faculty in Florida who were surveyed said they would not encourage a graduate student to seek employment in Florida.
“I am going to take early retirement despite a great job and salary. The threats are real and I am exhausted, between fighting this and fighting AI and poorly prepared, lazy, unethical students,” a tenured professor at a four-year public university wrote.
Higher education funding cuts have been the subject of nationwide political debate, including Florida State University reporting that it lost $100 million in federal grants, although $83 million of that has since been reinstated, the school’s president said last week.
About one-in-10, 11%, said they have had a federal contract ended by the Trump administration.
“The loss of vital federal grants has removed opportunities from me and my colleagues,” one professor wrote. “Attacks on LGBTQ students, immigrants, and diversity have also made it difficult to recruit promising graduate students or to guarantee their health and safety. Florida colleges being forced to remove diversity languages has destroyed years of valuable work, overturned an incredible general education curriculum, taken power and governance away from faculty, and wasted a lot of valuable time.”
Tenure troubles
Since 2023, professors in Florida with tenure have been subject to post-tenure review, graded on standards crafted by university trustees relating to research performance, teaching, service, and compliance with state laws and university policies.
Of the nearly-one-third who recently applied for an out-of-state job, tenure and DEI issues, academic freedom, the political climate, and cost of living were among the most common concerns.
Respondents said the number of applications for coworkers’ positions, as well as the quality of applicants, have decreased.
“Our department is trying to improve, but we have had several failed searches in recent years because candidates don’t want to move to Florida because of the broad political climate and the fact that tenure protections functionally no longer exist here,” a tenured public university professor said.
Some faculty said they have not experienced problems with “attacks on higher education,” one stating, “I haven’t felt any — Florida is great!.” Another said, “They’re not, and freedom in the classroom still persists, and I am at a public university in… wait for it… FLORIDA…”
“I find that I’m having to spend more time explaining to students why they need to use evidence to support their views and why clear arguments are important,” a professor at a private institution wrote.
One professor complained that “our board of trustees stacked with heritage foundation members, our president was forced out and replaced by a republican politician.” Course materials face heightened scrutiny, this professor added.
“The climate of persecution, retaliation, and ideological imposition makes it impossible to teach my discipline accurately or well without opening oneself to disciplinary measures,” that professor said. “While New College got a lot of headlines, similar invasions of public universities are happening with no national press, leaving those of us who work here isolated and vulnerable to attack.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a shake-up of the University of West Florida Board of Trustees in a more conservative light earlier this year and that institution is now led by a former GOP lawmaker.
Results for the survey were collected throughout August and more than 60% of respondents said they are tenured. Last year’s iteration of the survey featured responses from about 350 Florida professors.
“There is a lower threshold of critical thinking because everyone is fearful about what is ‘allowed’ vs. ‘banned’ by law. The fear and the self-censorship is widespread. Our administration, now saddled with a governor-imposed, unqualified hire as a President, is understandably more cautious rather than vocal about protecting academic freedom,” one professor wrote.
The State Board of Education on Wednesday approved changes in the Florida High School Athletic Association’s bylaws that include replacing mentions of the word “gender” with the word “sex,” amid a larger dispute between federal and state officials.
The changes came as Florida and other Republican-led states are challenging a Biden administration rule that would help carry out Title IX, a decades-old law that bars discrimination in education programs based on sex.
The federal rule, in part, would require that discrimination on the basis of gender identity be included under the broader definition of sex discrimination.
State Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. said Wednesday he has “directed the institutions under my purview not to take any steps toward implementing these harmful (federal) regulations.” Diaz said the Florida High School Athletics Association is one of those institutions.
The changes to the FHSAA bylaws included an update to the organization’s policy on “nondiscrimination.”
“The association will not discriminate in its governance policies, programs and employment practices on the basis of age, color, disability, sex, national origin, race, religion, creed, or educational choice. Each school is responsible to determine independently its own policies regarding nondiscrimination,” the updated bylaw says.
Florida and other Republican-led states in recent years have passed numerous measures focused on transgender people. In education, those measures have dealt with issues such as what bathrooms transgender students can use and barring transgender females from playing on girls’ sports teams.
During the education board meeting Wednesday in Miami, Crystal Etienne, a Miami-Dade County teacher, criticized the FHSAA bylaw changes after they were approved.
“Do you think a child is living through this scrutiny to be their true, authentic selves to win at sports? Do you think that’s what is happening in these schools? This is just another way to push the culture wars,” Etienne said.
Etienne also warned that if Florida does not “comply with Title IX, we will be at risk to lose the federal funding that our schools need to succeed.”
Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina filed a federal lawsuit last month challenging the new Title IX rule. They allege, in part, that the Biden administration overstepped its legal authority in extending the regulations to apply to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
An Alabama federal judge will hear arguments July 1 on a request by the states and other plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction against the rule.
“By broadening the definition of sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity, the Biden administration is taking sports and educational opportunities away from girls,” Diaz said during Wednesday’s meeting.
But the U.S. Department of Education posted documents on its website that said the rule does not apply to issues about participation on sports teams.
“The department intends to issue a separate final rule to address Title IX’s application to sex-separate athletic teams,” one of the documents said.
State Board of Education ratification of FHSAA bylaws is a relatively new requirement. The Legislature last year passed a law requiring the board to give final approval to such changes.
“A bylaw adopted by the (FHSAA) Board of Directors does not take effect until it is ratified by the State Board (of Education), allowing us to have a little bit of oversight but also have a great dialogue with the FHSAA,” Board of Education Chairman Ben Gibson said Wednesday.
Other changes to the bylaws approved Wednesday include allowing student-athletes to continue playing sports if they graduate early.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed bills that include seeking to prevent “indoctrination” in teacher-training programs and beginning to allow credit unions to hold state money.
The teacher-training bill (HB 1291) was one of the most-controversial education issues of this year’s legislative session, which ended March 8. It seeks to prevent “identity politics” from being included in teacher-preparation programs at colleges and universities.
DeSantis said the measure, which will take effect July 1, “prohibits the indoctrination” of prospective teachers.
“The Legislature on this looked at it and said, ‘We don’t want these teacher-preparation programs to become captive to some political agenda,’” DeSantis said during a bill-signing event at the VyStar Tower in Jacksonville.
Earlier, DeSantis posted on the X social-media platform that the legislation will protect “Floridians from the Agenda of the Global Elites.”
But the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a statement Thursday criticizing the bill, describing it as an “effort to silence educational programs that teach empathy and respect for all.”
“There is no greater threat to our democracy than efforts to scare Floridians out of exercising their right to free speech and to have open and honest discussions about the role racism and oppression played in the history of our country,” Sam Boyd, senior supervising attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in the statement. “Courts have already ruled that laws like these, which seek to impose censorship on higher education, are unconstitutional. This law is no different.”
Under the bill, teacher-preparation programs cannot “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum or instruction that teaches identity politics.” The bill includes ties to a 2022 law that restricts the way various race-related concepts can be taught in schools —a law that DeSantis dubbed the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees”, or Stop WOKE Act.
This year’s measure seeks to prevent teacher-preparation programs from being “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”
The bill also will apply to programs that prepare school leaders such as principals for their roles.
During legislative debates, supporters and opponents disagreed about whether the bill was designed to keep indoctrination out of classrooms or to prevent educators from teaching accurate history.
“HB 1291 will infringe upon freedom of speech and continue to keep Floridians uneducated and keep them from having honest discussions about our country’s past,” Kara Gross, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said in a statement March 6, the day the bill received final passage. “This is a blatant effort by certain lawmakers to limit discussions and censor viewpoints that they do not agree with.”
DeSantis on Thursday also signed a bill (HB 989) that included priorities of state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, including allowing state funds to be deposited in credit unions. In the past, only banks have been eligible.
Credit unions and banks have waged lobbying battles in recent years about the issue, which involves being designated as what is known as a qualified public depository. The House voted 49-45 on the next-to-last day of the legislative session to approve an amendment allowing credit unions to receive deposits. The Senate gave final approval to the bill on the last day of the session.
The bill also seeks to prevent financial institutions from discriminating in providing services based on such things as customers’ political opinions or speech. The measure also will allow Patronis to hire a “tax liaison” to handle calls by Floridians involving the federal Internal Revenue Service.
The Florida Senate on Friday passed a measure that could lead to the history of communism being taught in grades as low as kindergarten.
The proposal (SB 1264) was approved in a 25-7 vote, and would need approval from the House before it could go to the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Under the bill, the state Department of Education would be directed to “prepare and offer” educational standards related to communism history instruction, and would require certain concepts to be included.
For example, the curriculum would have to include lessons on the “increasing threat of communism in the United States and to our allies through the 20th century” and the “economic, industrial, and political events that have preceded and anticipated communist revolutions.”
The educational standards would have to launch in the 2026-27 school year and would have to be “age appropriate and developmentally appropriate” for students.
Senate bill sponsor Jay Collins, R-Tampa, and other supporters of the bill have warned that young people are increasingly viewing communism in a positive light.
“Here’s what I know about communism: It doesn’t care what race, creed, color, gender, sexual identification, ideology you come from — it will destroy your life and your family’s life completely the same,” Collins said.
Florida students currently can get lessons on communism in high-school social studies courses or in a seventh-grade civics and government course. A high-school U.S. government class required for graduation also includes 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day” that covers various communist regimes throughout history.
Sen. Geraldine Thompson, a Windermere Democrat who is a former educator, said the measure is “duplicative” because instruction about communism already exists in public schools.
“If we want to have a greater emphasis on communism, let’s just infuse it into the curriculum that we have now. And because it’s duplicative and puts an additional responsibility or burden on already overworked individuals, I cannot support the bill,” Thompson said.
