“Moms For Liberty Guy” Shows Up at Duval Workshop

Last week, voters across the country rejected Moms for Liberty endorsed school board candidates. Today, Florida’s Department of Education appears to be openly embracing them.

This morning in Duval County, at a school board workshop, Terry L. Stoops, Director of the Florida Department of Education’s newest office, Academically Successful and Resilient Districts (ASRD), walked in with and sat next to Duval County’s Moms for Liberty Chapter Chair. (That is him, with his leg crossed, on the right.)

Reportedly, he briefly chatted with two current, M4L aligned school board members and joked he was the “Moms for Liberty guy.”

Why was he there?

The workshop agenda included:

• Career Technical Education Academies
• Master Facility Plan Progress Update
• Pre-organizational meeting (where the board will discuss who will be the next school board chair)

Was he there to influence the process? To intimidate? Or simply to show the FLDOE’s support of certain board members?

Officially, Stoops says his job  is “focused on assisting school board members and those who interact with them,” in order to determine how he can “best serve school board members and parents who interact with them.” In practice that means “M4L/DeSantis aligned school board members and M4L members.”

It has been reported that Stoops’ $126,000 salary was paid by a federal grant and administered through the University of South Florida. The official response to that report, which disclosed the source of the federal grant funds were a $69 million allocation “to support educational opportunities in Florida, boost student health and safety and promote the use of technology,” was:

To be clear, I am not crying, I am curious. Will Stoops be attending more school board meetings? Will he be meeting with all board members or just certain board members? Is his travel schedule public and who approves it? Is this an appropriate use of these federal grant funds? What is going on here?