Florida reaches way too far into classrooms. The new target: nicknames | Opinion

Is it Robert, Rob, Bob or Bobby? Figuring out a student’s nickname used to be as simple as asking a question. Thanks to new rules from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, however, it will now require unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy.

And for what? To advance Florida’s over-the-top preoccupation with gender pronouns and control of classrooms, which has been neatly wrapped in a seemingly benign “parental rights” package.

Under a new rule issued by the Florida Board of Education in July, parents must give consent for schools to call their child by a nickname, or any “deviation from the child’s legal name.” The rule, according to a Board presentation, will “strengthen the rights of parents and safeguard their child’s educational record to ensure the use of the child’s legal name in school.”

Make no mistake. This rule isn’t about the integrity of educational records. It smacks of pure bigoted politics. As many LGBTQ rights groups have pointed out, the requirement could hurt transgender and non-binary kids who are not out to their parents. Unfortunately, not every family is welcoming to their LGBTQ child.

The real issue for Florida’s political appointees and Republican lawmakers likely isn’t that Robert wants to go by Rob. It’s if Robert identifies as Roberta. Creating a rule specifically targeting transgender students perhaps was a step too far — if there’s such a thing as going too far for Florida Republicans who spare no efforts to demonize and ostracize LGBTQ youth.

“It’s basic human decency to call people by their names, the nicknames they go by and their pronouns. Students should always feel like they belong and can be honest about who they are,” GLAAD president and chief executive Sarah Kate Ellis wrote in a statement to Miami New Times.

The new rule comes on the heels of Florida’s parental-rights law known as “Don’t say gay.” The law mandates K-12 public schools adopt as policy that it’s “false” to ascribe a gender pronoun that doesn’t align with a person’s sex assigned at birth. Essentially, this is the state of Florida saying that transgender Floridians don’t exist. “Don’t say gay” prohibits schools from requiring teachers and students refer to someone by their preferred gender pronoun. It also bans teachers from asking a student what their preferred pronoun is.

Florida has made it clear that trans people should have no place in our public institutions. It doesn’t stop with “Don’t say gay.” Another law passed this year bars transgender students and staff from using school bathrooms — unless it’s a single-stall restroom — that align with their gender identity.

Florida caused confusion when College Board issued a statement earlier this month saying the state had effectively banned an AP Psychology course by telling districts they would have to exclude lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation. Faced with backlash, the state’s commissioner of education later said the course could be taught “in its entirety.”

Lawmakers’ disdain for trans people is no longer concealed or reprimanded. State Rep. Webster Barnaby, R-Deltona, faced no consequence after he called trans people “demons and imps” during a House hearing. Miami state Sen. Ileana Garcia gave a mea culpa after facing national backlash for saying, on the Senate floor, that “LGBT is not a permanent thing.”

These are the people running Florida and making laws that affect millions of children in public schools. It’s no surprise the state has come up with absurd policy after absurd policy, enshrining into law and policy unnecessary and burdensome requirements that are more about electoral politics than education.

Nicknames have little bearing on students’ academic achievement, but, apparently, it has a lot on the people in Tallahassee who use their power to regulate their own discomfort with cultural changes.

Silly rules on a child’s nickname would be laughable if what’s going on in Florida weren’t so serious.

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