Erasing Florida's Past

Robert Cassanello

In the current atmosphere of economic uncertainty and resulting budget cuts, governors and legislators around the country are trim ming services that many citizens have long taken for granted. In the latest round of fiscal retrenchment, state libraries find themselves vulnerable to desperate moves to save state funds. The Washington State Library, for example, was closed to the public last year while local libraries in Washington, D.C., and parts of New York shortened their hours of operation and provided less services to their patrons. In Florida, Governor Jeb Bush wants to take an even more drastic approach by removing the state library from his budget altogether. Bush's actions, although seemingly isolated, reflect a larger trend in Florida to minimize history education.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush would like to transfer the state library collection to Nova Southeastern University. Above, the NSU Library, Research, and Information Technology Center--a joint use facility with the Broward County Board of County Commissioners. (Photo courtesy NSU.)

As a Florida historian, I was deeply concerned when I heard the news that Governor Bush recommended the closing of the Florida State Library and the transfer of the state archives, state museum, and Bureau of Historic Preservation to other departments within the government. His proposed actions stemmed from a disagreement with Florida voters in the 2002 election. Although Bush won reelection, voters in Florida voiced their disapproval of his educational policies when they approved a statewide amendment to reduce public school class sizes within the next ten years. On the campaign trail, the governor had actually attacked the amendment as irresponsible and too costly for the fragile state budget, declaring that he had a "devious" plan to subvert it. In a state where some high school classes have over forty students—and in a time when the state mandated Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) exam not only determines promotion and graduation for students, but high failure rates could threaten the financial livelihood of poor performing schools--there is a great deal of anxiety over K-12 education. Bush responded to classroom overcrowding and poor FCAT scores by reintroducing ideas such as vouchers, yet voters ignored his recommendations and replied with demand for smaller classes. The actual cost of the measure to reduce class size is uncertain--proponents claim it will cost anywhere from $4 billion to $12 billion--however, opponents argue it will sap $50 billion from the state budget to implement the amendment.

In a move that he claims will help reduce class size, Bush proposed saving $5.4 million by laying-off the Florida State Library staff and transferring the collection to a willing university. Interestingly, the state library brings in more grants than its actual operating costs. Bush initially flirted with the idea of transferring the collection to Florida State University. This attempt failed, however, when the president of FSU learned that no monies, staff, or space would come with the collection. Because the governor is cutting funding to most public universities, a suitable public replacement for FSU has yet to be found.

Bush's actions have created a vocal protest among significant segments of the Florida history and library community. Numerous editors around the state have also lashed out at the governor, calling him an "outsider" with no regard or respect for Florida's past. The Florida Historical Society hosted a statewide summit and a successful petition campaign that garnered over 16,000 names to stop the measure. A week before his State of the State Address, Bush informed Floridians that he reached an agreement with Nova Southeastern University to transfer the collection to the private school in Broward County. In the agreement, Nova would receive the 350,000 piece circulating collection and $5 million to cover the housing and moving expenses of the collection to Nova's campus in Davie, Florida, five hundred miles south of Tallahassee. On 4 March, while Bush delivered his State of the State Address, two hundred protesters formed a human chain around the R. A. Gray Building where the library is currently located.

This issue has some bipartisan support. Many Democrats and Republicans in the legislature say they will refuse to fund such a measure. Bush's cabinet, however, remains steadfast in its support. Lieutenant Governor Frank Brogan claims that more citizens would have access to the collection if it were housed in Davie. Secretary of State Glenda Hood also claimed that most of the circulating collection was underused. State library and historical organizations have vowed to sue the state if they decide to transfer books purchased by taxpayers to a private institution.

Clearly the voices of protest are right. If this move were to proceed, irreparable damage will be done to the future of Florida history. The Florida State Library has been around since 1845, chronicling and preserving the state's past. Compared to other state libraries, it ranks second in reference transactions, sixth in public service hours and tenth in circulation. While focusing on Bush's actions as a researcher, I couldn't help but think that these issues were indicative of other systemic problems in Florida.

During the same week these events unfolded, I read with disappointment an article in the Palm Beach Post that described serious attempts at grade inflation to combat low test scores on mandatory countywide history exams in the Palm Beach School system. According to the article, administrators restructured the grading scale so any student with only 54 percent correct could earn an "A." One employee of the school system recently observed, in fact, that due to budget cuts the county has not had a social studies and history curriculum coordinator for some time, noting that academic focus has shifted to passing the FCAT, which, incidentally, measures math and reading competency, not history.

This example is also indicative of how the teaching of history has become marginalized by the Florida Department of Education. Two years ago, I called the department to see if officials there would be interested in pursuing grants in order to collaborate on a state history curriculum (since I knew there had not been one since the late 1970s). Much to my dismay, I learned that the person in charge of social studies and history curriculum had quit a year earlier and, because of budget cuts, no effort was made to find a replacement. The Florida Department of Education has a curriculum director for every subject field except social studies, and social studies is not even listed as a field awaiting a director. The duties of social studies curriculum were transferred to the language arts curriculum director, who I spoke with and offered to help write a grant to address deficiencies in the teaching of state history. I suggested that the money from the grant could have been used to fund a position in social studies curriculum for the life of the award. He declined my offer, noting that budget cuts also forced the layoff of grant administrators—even if they were awarded the grant they could not hire a staff to administer it.

Luckily, some change is taking place on the local level. I do know that the school systems of Polk and Orange counties are independently developing strategies for addressing state history through the Teaching American History Grant program sponsored by the U. S. Department of Education. Other school systems, however, are not making such bold attempts in an atmosphere of shrinking budgets and mounting FCAT emphasis.

I have read Bush's critics lambasting him as an "outsider" without a deep appreciation for Florida's past, as if a native of the Sunshine State would have never considered abolishing the state library and shuffling important preservation agencies as though they were inconsequential. Bush's actions, however, parallel the lack of attention history receives in the public schools of the state. I, too, am not a native of Florida, but I did go to public school in Florida from kindergarten on through my graduate education. In elementary and middle school, the state mandated that social studies teachers address not only the nation's past, but also integrate Florida's history into their lessons. By the time I entered high school in the 1980s, the state began to remove the Florida component in favor of more vague and ambiguous content benchmarks. In subsequent decades, budget cuts and anxiety over standardized testing scores further eroded an emphasis on teaching state history. During this process, public support for the teaching of Florida's past remained disturbingly mute.

Governor Bush is taking the blame for lacking the vision to appreciate the importance of conserving the state's past, while other legislators and officials began systematically erasing Florida's history from the public school classrooms decades before. Frustration over test scores, declining state budgets, and shuffling the history curriculum to language arts administrators are serious problems that school systems are faced with around the country. I cannot criticize Bush without also seeing this as a final step in a dangerous process. What has happened in Florida should be a wake-up call to other scholars around the country. Bush's methods of cost cutting might become popular with other governors, especially where the public's knowledge of the past has taken a backseat to test-taking strategies. As a firsthand witness and vocal opponent of Bush's actions, I cannot help but think that the state cast the iron for these developments over twenty years ago.

Robert Cassanello is assistant professor of history at Miles College and coeditor of H-Florida <http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~florida/>.