Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced a plan in early September 2025 that he intends to make Florida the primary state to finish vaccine mandates throughout all faculties and in different state-run establishments comparable to nursing properties.
His proposal would dismantle Florida Statute 1003.22, which calls for that each one faculties, together with private and non-private faculties, gather evidence of scholars’ immunization for a spread of communicable illnesses once they join.
In 2025, roughly 88.7% of Florida kindergartners are vaccinated, which is sort of 5% less than the nationwide moderate. Florida’s price of vaccination for kindergarten scholars has ceaselessly declined during the last 8 years – and dropped from 93.5% in 2020 to 89.9% in 2024.
If Florida state legislators approve DeSantis’ plan once they convene in January 2026, the state would sweepingly get rid of long-standing duties for faculties and different puts to require a normal set of immunizations for enrollment. Florida nursing properties lately assess whether or not citizens must obtain pneumococcal and flu vaccines.
As a sociologist, I learn about how schooling coverage shapes democracy, social brotherly love and inequality. I’m additionally a professor of instructional coverage research.
DeSantis’ plan is indicative of Florida’s normal option to approve schooling coverage this is aligned with conservative priorities on “woke politics” and tradition conflict problems, comparable to e-book bans.
Different Republican-led states, comparable to Alabama, Arkansas and Iowa, are usually fast to practice Florida’s lead and enforce their very own variations of Florida’s tutorial and social insurance policies.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks after he signed 3 schooling expenses in Sarasota, Fla., in Would possibly 2023.
Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Put up by the use of Getty Pictures
Florida surroundings examples
Neatly sooner than DeSantis, Florida has attempted to be a countrywide chief of instructional reform and has tightened state keep an eye on over faculties by means of reshaping requirements on trying out, college curricula and steerage on what can and can’t be taught in public faculties.
Florida’s former Gov. Jeb Bush, who served from 1999 thru 2007, helped lead this tutorial reform paintings. He was once steadfast in expanding top-down responsibility for educators, intently tracking their efficiency by means of expanding high-stakes trying out and tying lecturers’ repayment to check effects.
Bush additionally broadly promoted insurance policies to extend college selection for folks or insurance policies that ceaselessly permit any dad or mum – without reference to source of revenue – to use for state grants that use public cash to pay for his or her youngsters’s personal college schooling.
Public college enrollment has ceaselessly declined in Florida during the last 20 years. Whilst 86% of Florida scholars attended a standard public college in 2001-2002, simply 51% of Florida youngsters went to a public college in 2024.
In 2022, Arizona was the primary state to undertake a common voucher machine.
Florida then expanded its college voucher program in 2023 – permitting all folks, without reference to source of revenue, to make use of state taxpayer-funded scholarships to assist pay for his or her youngsters’s personal college or house college enjoy. Greater than 500,000 Florida scholars gained those vouchers in 2025.
Since 2024, 10 states plus Washington D.C. have followed voucher methods.
Important race concept at the entrance line
Since taking place of work in 2018, DeSantis has additionally set his attractions squarely upon different hot-button problems, together with by means of banning vital race concept from public faculties in 2021.
Important race concept, or CRT, is an educational framework that appears at how other types of marginalization, comparable to gender or race, overlap, in addition to how racism is embedded inside of American institutional and criminal buildings. DeSantis has stated that CRT quantities to “state-sanctioned racism” that teaches “kids to hate our country or to hate each other.”
I and different mavens on schooling thought to be this ban on CRT in large part symbolic. The chance that Ok-12 educators are skilled in CRT to then train it to scholars appeared far flung.
That very same yr, Florida rejected 54 math textbooks that officers felt contained CRT-related material.
In 2023, DeSantis additionally cited CRT when he blocked Florida from providing the nonprofit Faculty Board’s newly advanced AP African American Research route from public faculties.
Those movements made Florida one of the vital first states to put formal coverage restrictions on CRT, successfully prohibiting discussions round race and inequality in public faculties.
Since 2021, 44 different states have offered equivalent expenses. Roughly 28 states, together with Texas, Idaho, Tennessee and Montana, have followed a minimum of one legislation restricting educators’ discussions of racism and sexism.
Anti-LGBTQ+ measures
In 2022, Florida additionally was the primary state to ban lecture room instruction on sexuality or gender id subjects from kindergarten thru 3rd grade. This legislation – officially referred to as the Parental Rights in Schooling Act however ceaselessly known as “Don’t Say Gay” – additionally restricts dialogue on those subjects in upper grades.
Regardless that the legislation restricts formal lecture room dialogue or curriculum on sexuality and gender id, lecturers are allowed to talk about those subjects in casual settings, comparable to scholar homosexual and directly alliance golf equipment.
Via 2024, a rising record of a minimum of 20 states, together with Alabama and Indiana, adopted Florida and offered equivalent rules to “Don’t Say Gay.”
A bookstall in Coral Gables, Fla., presentations an inventory of banned books in 2022.
Jeffrey Greenberg/UCG/Common Pictures Team by the use of Getty Pictures
E-book bans
E-book bans are some other outstanding entrance the place DeSantis has influenced how schooling seems in Florida – and in different states.
E-book bans refer to colleges and libraries eliminating books which can be deemed arguable or irrelevant for college kids, ceaselessly flagged for content material associated with race, sexuality or gender.
In 2023, Florida handed a legislation referred to as HB 1069, which, amongst different issues, banned books basically flagged by means of folks or schooling officers for discussing or bringing up sexual subjects.
The sort of banned books was once “Arthur’s Birthday,” a youngsters’s image e-book in line with the animated PBS youngsters’s collection about an aardvark. The e-book was once banned for together with a connection with the sport “spin the bottle.”
Florida’s faculties banned roughly 4,500 books within the 2023-2024 college yr, greater than every other state.
A federal pass judgement on overruled a big portion of HB 1069 in August 2025, calling the categorization overly wide and unconstitutional.
Total, there was a 200% build up in e-book bans national from 2022 to 2024.
Past Florida
If Florida lifts its vaccine mandate, the verdict would additionally impact different teams in Florida, together with small children in day care facilities and aged citizens dwelling in nursing properties, which might additionally now not require vaccines.
Non-public faculties and universities would retain the power to impose their very own stances and vaccine necessities. Alternatively, personal tutorial establishments in Florida ceaselessly preemptively align themselves with state steerage.
Idaho loosened its vaccination regulations in the summertime of 2025, prohibiting faculties from denying admission to an individual who has no longer gained vaccines. Louisiana has additionally stated it’s going to prevent selling mass vaccine campaigns.
As fresh schooling coverage historical past presentations, Florida’s possible choice to finish vaccine mandates in faculties and different puts would straight away have ripple results around the country. It’s most likely that if Florida moves down its college vaccine necessities, this transfer will catalyze a fast unraveling of equivalent public well being protections throughout different states.
