Every Florida public school may soon have portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in "conspicuous" locations.
Legislation with this requirement, SB 420, is blazing through the Senate, having passed its second of three assigned committees on Wednesday.
“We all know that knowledge about our country's past and the great leaders who helped shape our nation is not as high as it once was and as high as we would like it to be,” said Republican Sen. Danny Burgess of Zephyrhills, the bill sponsor. “This bill is a simple way to let our children know who these two men were and what they represented to our nation.”
An older Florida law already requires “In God We Trust” to be placed in a conspicuous location in schools.
The original version of the legislation would’ve required the portraits in every K-12 classroom and every social studies classroom for older grades. A bill analysis for that former language said it would have a “significant negative fiscal impact” on the state Department of Education.
Burgess said, after getting feedback, he believed putting them in every classroom was “probably unrealistic.”
The portraits would be paid for by the state, not school districts.
The bill received one “no” vote on Wednesday, from Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones of Miami Gardens.
“From elementary school to almost seventh grade, I never saw anyone on the wall who looked like me up there,” said Jones, who is Black. “There was a question of me wanting and asking the question, ‘Why wasn't anyone memorialized that looked like me?’”
Lawmakers said they had expected the Wednesday committee meeting to be quick — but a group of youth advocates came to debate the bill during the public comment period. Several said they preferred more attention on teaching civics than putting up portraits.
“This bill, in the testimony and the conversation that it elicited today, is truly exactly what the intention is,” Burgess said.
“It's so much more than mere symbolism,” he continued. “It clearly validates that having these portraits in a schoolhouse will elicit all the right discussion and only enhance our civic debates and patriotism in the classroom and across our schools.”
He said it was “probably the best committee meeting I've ever sat through.”
The House version of the legislation, HB 371, hasn’t been heard in a committee yet.
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This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
