Younger winners received a $100 art supplies gift card as well as a year pass to Florida state parks, while older students got a “2-year Florida College Plan scholarship provided by the Florida Prepaid College Foundation and a $100 gift card for school supplies,” according to a press release Friday.
Four educators also were recognized as Black History Month Excellence in Education award winners. Each educator will receive $2,500 in prize money from Volunteer Florida, the release stated.
The reception celebrating Black History Month came at a time when the month of February is almost over and when the state’s education system is still fraught with criticisms on how African American history should be taught in Florida schools.
The topic of African American history education has been a contentious one for the entire month of February, invigorated by a battle between the DeSantis administration and the century-old nonprofit College Board that created a new Advanced Placement (AP) African American studies course.
The Florida Department of Education rejected the pilot course at the time, according to a letter sent to the College Board in mid-January. Since then, there’s been backlash and a national outcry over concerns that the rejection of the course could be seen as diminishing the importance of Black history and Black culture.
Now, DeSantis is considering a potential change in providers for college-level courses, possibly removing College Board AP courses from high school students in Florida.
Thursday, college students and faculty gathered at Florida State University in Tallahassee, just down the street from the Florida Capitol building, to protest the state’s rejection of Advanced Placement African American studies, among other frustrations with the DeSantis administration’s education policies.
Just over a week before, civil rights activists including the Rev. Al Sharpton, along with a crowd of Floridians, took to the streets in Tallahassee to protest the DeSantis administration’s AP African American studies course in a march to the Capitol building.
Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump also has threatened to file a lawsuit over the situation. Crump, who is known for representing the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, said three young students in high school in Florida will be named as lead plaintiffs, should a lawsuit be filed by his law firm. Those three students joined Crump at a recent press conference in late January.
The DeSantis administration has a history of limiting how race and gender can be discussed in Florida schools. In 2022, the Legislature passed the so-called “Stop WOKE Act,” setting restrictions on how race and gender can be discussed in K-12 classrooms.
Earlier, in 2021, the state Board of Education prohibited materials from the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which reframes the founding of the United States to focus on the experience Black Americans, as well as what’s called Critical Race Theory.
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