Florida Wanted To Take Her Teaching License Over A Black Lives Matter Flag. A Judge Just Said No
Forbes | By Peter Greene | June 13, 2024
The DeSantis administration was poised to make an example of Amy Donofrio, demonstrating that Florida is “where woke goes to die” by punishing her for refusing to take down her classroom Black Lives Matter flag. The state went after Donofrio’s license; instead, a judge has ruled that Donofrio will remain licensed to teach in Florida.
Donofrio had been teaching at the then-named Robert E. Lee High School in Duval County since 2012. In that time, she had established the EVAC movement, a program to lift up at risk youth.
The group developed a national profile. They presented at the 2016 Coalition for Juvenile Justice Youth Summit. They traveled to Washington D.C. where they met with John Lewis. They met with President Obama. They won first place in the National Harvard Kind Schools Challenge, for which Senator Marco Rubio wrote them a letter of commendation.
For her work, Donofrio was honored with her school’s Teacher of the Year award, as well as community awards celebrating her achievements.
Court documents note that as early as the 2018-2019 school year, Donofrio had a Black Lives Matter sign and t-shirt displayed in her room, with a “Hate Has No Home Here” sign outside her door that displayed hearts for the LGBTQ community, Black Lives Matter, a peace sign, and an American flag.
2020 was a year of rising tensions. In January, a former member of the EVAC movement was shot and killed by police, only four months before the nationally-galvanizing murder of George Floyd. Jacksonville saw controversy over pandemic masking (Duval County parents would eventually sue the district over mask mandates).
In the fall, the building principal told the staff to stay neutral on all controversies, including a proposal to replace the name of Lee from the school.
That fall, Donofrio put up a Black Lives Matter at the entrance to her classroom. Soon after, citing a district policy about advertising, the assistant principal suggested she remove the flag. By the beginning of November, the suggestion had become “the flag needs to come down.” But the district had no policy covering the flag in November; that policy wasn’t in place until March 19.
The next school day, Donofrio was told to remove the flag by the end of the day “or it will be taken down for you.” She chose the second, and that evening, the principal took down the flag. The next day Donofrio was pulled from her classroom and reassigned to the district warehouse while the district investigated “several allegations.” It declined to specify what the allegations were. The judge found no evidence “that any student, parent, or teacher ever complained about the flag.”
The student population (70% Black) did not take Donofrio’s reassignment well. The principal testified that there was a hostile atmosphere after Donofrio’s departure.
In April of 2021, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued the district on Donofrio’s behalf.
In May, then-Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, while speaking at Hillsdale College and plugging Florida’s new state standards, mentioned the case:
I’m getting sued right now in Duval County, which is in Jacksonville because there was an entire classroom memorialized to Black Lives Matter. We made sure she was terminated and now we’re being sued by every one of the liberal left groups who say it’s freedom of speech issue.
Except that Donofrio had not been fired. Nor was she aware that the state was involved in “making sure” that she be terminated.
In August, the civil suit was settled, and Donofrio was awarded a cash settlement, but would no longer teach at newly-renamed Riverside High School. “Within days,” Donofrio claims, the state department of education had begun an investigation into her teaching license.
Donofrio says that her team was not allowed to depose Corcorran, but were able to depose the head of Florida’s investigation, and it was not clear exactly her misconduct was supposed to have been. It might have been easier to simply go after her for insubordination in not removing the flag, but it seems that the state, having held her up as an example of a “woke” indoctrinator, was committed to that anti-woke narrative.
“It is a troubling time that a teacher would have to think that pursuing a classroom that’s safe and welcoming for their students could cause the state to want to come after your license,” Mark Richard, one of Donofrio’s lawyers, told The Tributary.
Corcorran’s successor, Manny Diaz, Jr., filed an administrative complaint, aiming to take away Donofrio’s teaching license. The complaint was later amended to add a new charge—that she had allowed masks with “Robert E. Lee was a gang member” in her classroom during the flap over the school’s name.
The complaint included three counts, The first argued that Donofrio had violated the Principles of Professional Conduct. The second and third spoke to alleged nature of the violations: that she had not protected students from conditions “harmful to learning and/or the student’s mental health and/or physical health and/or safety,” and that she had failed to take “reasonable precautions to distinguish between personal views” and those of the school.
When the hearing was finally held, in February of this year, activist groups showed up to oppose the state’s decision to threaten Donofrio’s license.
“All Amy did, in my opinion,” said organizer Wells Todd, “was what the students wanted. What the students thought needed to be done.”
The judge found that none of Donofrio’s actions threatened the health and well-being of her students. The BLM flag had been displayed in her room for years prior with no suggestion that its presence blurred the line between personal and school positions. the rule declaring the school must avoid any position on BLM was put in place after Donofrio was already disciplined.
The judge found that Donofrio had crossed one line. She was told not to take a position on whether or not to get rid of Robert E. Lee’s name on the school, and by allowing the masks, the judge determined she had violated the directive. Citing eight mitigating factors, the judge determined that Donofrio would receive a written reprimand—far less punitive than stripping her of her teaching license.
Under DeSantis, Florida has passed broad and vague laws that have had a chilling effect on classroom teaching, making teachers fearful and uncertain about what they are allowed to do or say or teach. Stripping Donofrio of her license would have sent a message to other teachers to fall in line (a lesson Corcoran was so eager to deliver that he delivered it prematurely). Now it’s an example of something else.
Donofrio says that she hopes that other teachers take heart from her experience. “Affirming Black students should never put a teacher’s license at risk. In Florida, 64% of public school students are of color and I hope this can show that teachers not only will fight for our right to uphold our professional responsibility to them—but that we’ll win.” She is busy putting together a resource base for other teachers facing attack.
Meanwhile, Florida anti-woke laws continue to suffer setbacks. A federal appeals court has ruled that the “Stop WOKE” act is an unconstitutional violation of First Amendment rights while a judge blocked a different portion of the law prohibiting certain lessons from being taught at the college level calling it “positively dystopian.” The Supreme Court has allowed a block the anti-drag law to stand. A federal judge blocked the anti-protest law. A critical portion Florida’s anti-immigration law. And just this week, a federal judge blocked the Florida ban on transgender care for adolescents.
Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. has not responded to a request for comment on the Donofrio case.
