Bay County children need real solutions to real problems I Guestview
Recently, the Republican Party of Bay County’s Tho Bishop attempted to gin up a crisis of transgenderism and rampant sexually explicit material in Bay County schools. His proof that these are serious issues? Not stories from actual Bay County parents, but a random Twitter account and his own speech at a coffee talk, which largely cites the random Twitter account.
The fact is prior to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, there was and always has been a review process for school books for age-appropriateness and sexually explicit material. If a book falls through the cracks and lands on a library shelf, there was already a process to get the book removed if there was a complaint. I am a parent of two elementary school-age children in Bay District Schools. I, of course, would be outraged if a teacher was reading a graphic book such as the one he frets about to my elementary-age children. Every parent would, Democrat or Republican. If it did, it would be national news and the teacher, of course, would be immediately fired. The fact you can’t find it and Mr. Bishop doesn’t actually present a case shows it is not happening. If Mr. Bishop actually talked to parents of Bay District Schools students, nightmare fantasies such as his are not what keep parents like myself up at night.
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What keeps me up at night is the district’s staffing issues. It took six months to get my youngest into the speech therapy he needs for his high-frequency hearing loss. Apparently, our district has been struggling to hire sufficient special needs personnel. The staff shortages and their effects were the single most-discussed concern raised by community members at a townhall Bay County Democrats hosted on young people and students last November. The shortages are exacerbated by the fact that the county cannot pay competitive wages for our hard-working teachers and staff. Bay County Republicans have actively made this worse by opposing increased funding for teachers’ pay last year. If Mr. Bishop actually talked to Bay County parents, he’d know the last thing we want is for them to be distracted reviewing library books instead of teaching our children and getting them the support they need.
What keeps me up at night is the fact that in some Florida counties very similar to Bay, exemptions from standard student vaccines such as for measles have increased nearly ten-fold in the last year due to the Republican war on vaccines. Bills that Republicans have passed in the Florida legislature will make vaccine requirements even weaker in the future, making the risk of an outbreak of one of these diseases in our schools more likely in the years to come.
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What keeps me up at night is knowing a family friend who stopped going to prenatal checkups because she could not afford the visits. Because Florida Republicans have refused to expand Medicaid, she will not have affordable health insurance until after the child is born.
I’d suggest fellow Bay County parents do a thought experiment. Ask yourself: Do you personally know an elementary schooler who has been read an excerpt from “Gender Queer” by a teacher, or forced into a gender reassignment surgery? Or have you been frustrated by the teacher staffing shortages within the county, worried about your child getting sick, or know someone struggling to afford medical care? If the former, feel free to support the party worried about what’s only found on TikTok. If the latter, Democrats are fighting for you.
Matthew Bays is the president of the Young Democrats of Bay County and parent of two children within Bay District Schools.
This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Bay County children need real solutions to real problems I Guestview
