The Lawyers' Committee is interested in sending the below petition to the Florida Department of Education and Commissioner Manny Diaz. The purpose of this petition is to show FLDOE that Floridians—students, teachers, parents—want the AP African American Studies curriculum to be offered in public schools. Please sign on to this petition if you want to lend your support to this cause. We are aiming to gather 100+ signatures before we send this petition so please share this link with anyone you think would be interested in signing on.
Dear Commissioner Diaz,
We, the undersigned, write to ask you and the Florida Department of Education to approve for listing in Florida's 2024-2025 course directory the recently finalized AP African American Studies course ("APAAS"). Our great state has a longstanding commitment to teaching African American history. As provided for in Fla. Stat. s. 1003.42(2)(h), Florida requires the teaching of "[t]he history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience, abolition, and the history and contributions of Americans of the African diaspora to society." The statute further provides that teachers may use discussions and curricula to address "how the individual freedoms of persons have been infringed by slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, and racial discrimination, as well as topics relating to the enactment and enforcement of laws resulting in racial oppression, racial segregation, and racial discrimination." We strongly believe that allowing APAAS to be taught in Florida schools expressly aligns with the requirements and purpose of this law.
Five Florida schools have already had the opportunity to pilot an earlier version of APAAS during Fall/Winter 2022. The feedback from students and teachers from just that one semester was overwhelmingly positive. As one student said, the course made him feel more involved in his own history and more in tune with the contributions African American people made to this country. And, as a teacher who taught the pilot course observed, "[Students] were ravenous for that information. They were so willing and ready to engage with that knowledge."
We believe that offering APAAS in Florida will provide all our students, but especially Black students in Florida, with the opportunity to learn about the amazing contributions that African Americans made to our great nation. We respectfully request for FLDOE to offer this opportunity for the 2024-2025 school year and beyond.
Sincerely,
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