DeSantis puts end to petty revenge he started against school districts’ mask mandates | Editorial

Florida Republicans’ witch hunt against school districts who imposed mask mandates last year is finally over — thanks to the governor who started it.

Gov. Ron DeSantis was at one point on board with imposing financial penalties on those districts for defying his orders. But it looks like even he understands the optics of punishing students struggling with COVID-19 pandemic-related learning losses in an election year.

DeSantis announced $30 million in state budget vetoes on Thursday, cutting important South Florida infrastructure projects and some lawmakers’ pet projects. Not surprisingly, he kept in place a spending bonanza for his own politically-charged priorities, such as $12 million to relocate migrants to other states. But DeSantis displayed the common sense his Republican allies in the Legislature lacked when they used their control over the state’s purse strings to seek revenge.

DeSantis directed Education Commissioner Manny Diaz to ignore a plan that would have prohibited districts like Miami-Dade and Broward from tapping into $200 million for the state’s School Recognition Program. The program rewards schools that show academic improvement. DeSantis wrote in a letter that his “plain reading” of state law found that districts’ actions can’t be held against individual schools, WUSF reported.

That’s surprising for a governor who’s had no qualms about pushing the boundaries of his authority. For example, he forced lawmakers to pass a congressional redistricting map that helps the GOP and hurts Black representation in North Florida. We bet lawmakers are fuming, but what are they going to do against their all-powerful leader?

Perhaps DeSantis is just a stickler for the law, as he should be. Of perhaps he sees the limits of his war with schools over masks and the teaching of race and the LGBTQ community.

DeSantis might not pay the political price for his anti-mask actions, even though he stomped on local district’s ability to do what they believed necessary to protect students and staff from the delta variant. But lawmakers who pushed for this vindictive measure should. They include Senate President Wilton Simpson, who’s running for commissioner of agriculture, and state Rep. Randy Fine. Fine initially wanted to impose even harsher sanctions by cutting $200 million from those school districts, including the one he represents in Central Florida’s Brevard County.

Fine apparently didn’t know the governor had blocked lawmakers’ meddling with the School Recognition Program. On Thursday, he tweeted, in part, “BREAKING: The reckoning has arrived.” He later took that post down, according to WUSF.

The real reckoning should be for lawmakers who are too vindictive to put their constituents first.