Florida OKs Heritage Foundation plan for public schools

Audio By Carbonatix

(The Center Square) – A set of conservative principles developed by the group that authored Project 2025 has been adopted by Florida public schools. 

Board of Education members in November unanimously embraced the plan known as the Phoenix Declaration, produced by the Heritage Foundation, the think tank that created Project 2025 for President Donald Trump's second term. 

The state is the first to support the declaration, which promotes “parental choice, transparency about curricula and policies and objective truth,” according to the state Department of Education. The plan includes goals for teaching students about Judeo-Christian traditions and instilling personal responsibility and self-discipline, among other things.

Ryan Petty, chair of the state Board of Education, said it “will challenge us, as leaders, to resist complacency and ensure that Florida remains a national model for academic freedom, parental partnership and educational excellence.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation called the declaration “a vague but ideologically loaded framework” that would “open the door to religiously motivated political interference in Florida’s schools.”

“On its surface, the Phoenix Declaration wraps itself in pleasant language about truth, virtue and goodness,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, the organization’s co-president. “Underneath, it is a Trojan horse for Christian nationalist ideology and a blueprint for undermining public education in favor of conservative religious priorities.”

The group argues that public schools already teach civics and include patriotic observances and that the U.S. was not founded on Judeo-Christian traditions as a governing principle.

“Every child in Florida deserves a high-quality, fully funded, secular public education,” said Gaylor. “They deserve science grounded in evidence, history grounded in facts and civics grounded in constitutional principles, not a religiously infused political program that uses schools as a battleground for culture war agendas.”

Over 50 scholars and education policy experts endorsed The Phoenix Declaration when it was unveiled in February, according to the Department of Education.

The board also approved new teaching standards on communism that will be implemented in the upcoming 2026-2027 school year.

The standards are meant to educate students in understanding communist ideologies and how they “suppress individual freedoms, abuse power, and inflict widespread suffering,” the Department of Education said.

The move drew criticism from the Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers union, who said the benchmarks tell students what to think instead of encouraging critical thinking of various viewpoints. 

Some historians said the standards seek to rehabilitate the reputation of anti-communist Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who fueled a “Red Scare” of infiltration of communism in the U.S. in the 1950s that led to public accusations and blacklisting.