Florida Education Rebranded Mental Health and Social Emotional Learning as “Resiliency”: Leading the Way with a Globalist Agenda
Don’t let Florida’s legislators, leadership, or the Department of Education fool you. Florida is actively financing globalist mental health programs, Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and data collection in classrooms. This year the legislature voted unanimously for a law that stomps on parental rights regarding undisclosed data collection in schools. I traveled to Tallahassee twice to list the loopholes and parental rights violations during Committee hearings; they proceeded to pass a law that places parental rights beneath the financial profits of Education Technologies (EdTech).
The State of Florida, Florida’s Department of Education, and Florida’s legislators play a significant role in the push and financing of mental health programs such as Social Emotional Learning in schools.
In October 2022, Florida's State Board of Education, with the support of Casey DeSantis, “shifted” the focus of mental health instruction to “Resiliency Education”; they are playing word games. We still have the same intervention programs in classrooms we had when it was called SEL and Mental Health.
In fact, the Resiliency Education they describe is SEL, a Marxist program to promote “mental health” based on a globalist agenda pushed by organizations like CASEL (SEL standards), UNESCO, and the WEF.
UNESCO explains how they intend to use SEL for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). It sounds like they propose SEL as a means to nudge (manipulate) children through the cognitive dissonance created by SDGs. Apparently, they plan to use SEL to move children away from family, cultural, or religious values that conflict with SDGs. Ultimately, no longer living a world where we prosper, but rather one where we learn to do without: You’ll own nothing and be happy.
Our kids need to learn history, reading, writing, and math; not be psychologically profiled, data mined, and manipulated in schools with globalist agendas. Thanks to the Florida Department of Education and the support of the DeSantis! family, we have globalist driven psychological profiling.
The state uses language you don’t think you should disagree with: “necessary skills and resources...through life’s successes and challenges.” That is, until you bravely dig into curriculum and surveys.
Parents: you can argue about what is the correct set of skills with which to approach challenges, you can demand the state STOP psychologically profiling and performing interventions on children for compliance with globalist ideals that intend to mold your children into “global citizens”.
The “skills” Florida refers to are personal behaviors and mindsets that are NOT for the state or globalists to measure. “Resources” are often interventions from SEL programs such as Panorama, a software platform that delivers student surveys, creates actionable reports based on survey results (i.e. interventions), and tracks responses over time. Behaviors and mindsets (central to surveys) should be determined by individual, family, religious, and cultural values—not the state. They are sidelining your values, choices, and guidance as a parent.
Mental Health Education and Social Emotional Learning have no business in public education institutions.
In 2017, Dr. Karen Effrem and Jane Robbins co-authored an article that lists the five non-cognitive factors CASEL would use for measuring children in K-12 SEL standards:
Interestingly, Florida’s Resiliency Education Components include a new “Florida Specific Youth Survey” (FSYS) that is “administered alongside” the Florida Department of Health’s Florida’s Youth Tobacco Survey (FYTS) and Florida Department of Children and Families’ (DCF) Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey (FYSAS). The surveys are administered in schools.
This new Florida student survey is VERY focused on a litany of personal questions about students’ psychological state, they say, to inform instruction. These surveys measure students on the five non-cognitive CASEL metrics noted by Dr. Effrem and Jane Robbins, among other topics.
The Florida Specific Youth Survey (FSYS) categorizes questions into a number of subjects, three are specifically CASEL non-cognitive factors:
Self-Management
Self-Awareness
Responsible Decision-Making
Many other Florida Specific Youth Survey questions mimic the CASEL Framework bullet-points from the two categories below almost perfectly (“social awareness” and “relationship skills”).
Here are some questions from the FSYS:
“It is difficult for me to identify things or people I am grateful for.”
“I do not see other people's point of view.”
“I ignore other people's feelings.”
“I give up on my goals.”
“I get into arguments with those around me.”
“I think negatively about myself.”
“I lose my temper.”
“I tell lies.”
Other invasive questions from the surveys include: tobacco use, sexual activity, alcohol use, prescription drug abuse, driving under the influence, degrees of honesty, screen time, understanding the implications of sharing explicit photos, etc.
These questions have no place in an educational setting.
The CASEL 5 diagram is incorporated into the new Florida Specific Youth Survey:
Casey DeSantis took Resiliency Education under her wing; she and the Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz can call it what ever they want, the current Florida Department of Education website and Florida legislators make it very clear in Florida statutes what they mean:
“In accordance with section (s) 1011.62, Florida Statutes, (F.S.), the MHAA Plan allocation is to assist districts with establishing or expanding school-based mental health care;...”
The Mental Health Assistance Allocation (MHAA) was supported by 2023 House Bill 5101 (pg 52). Your legislators continue voting to inject taxpayer dollars into mental health programs in schools, using teachers and requiring access to mental health care professionals in schools.
Earlier this year Florida’s legislature pushed for more mental health intervention in schools, requiring school districts implement SCHOOL-BASED mental health assistance that includes training classroom TEACHERS and other staff (who’s that?) to DETECT and RESPOND. Does that mean to LABEL students and PERFORM INTERVENTIONS?
Florida legislation requires school districts submit plans that focus on a “multi-tiered system of supports” (MTSS) to deliver assessments, DIAGNOSE, and perform INTERVENTIONS and TREATMENT even to students who are “at high risk”, (i.e. treatments when NOT diagnosed)!
They have instituted behavior modification programs too:
Here is Florida Department of Education’s funding history on the Mental Health Assistance Allocation:
And even MORE MONEY!!
In March this year, the news media repeatedly characterized Florida’s Education Commissioner Manny Diaz as opposed to SEL, however, in one report after another the Commissioner is quoted objecting to the content of Edgenuity that was branded as ‘social emotional learning’. The Commissioner was not opposing SEL, he was voicing opposition to “divisive and discriminatory content.”
The Florida Department of Education is implementing and rolling out SEL surveys and SEL intervention programs; they are calling it Resiliency. These globalist programs are just as controversial and harmful as the “divisive and discriminatory content” to which Commissioner Diaz refers below.
“I implore you to conduct a thorough review to ensure all content is compliant with Florida law,” he continued. “Edgenuity/Imagine Learning’s divisive and discriminatory content branded as ‘social-emotional learning (SEL)’ has no place in Florida’s classrooms.” (USA Today, March 2023)
Clearly between the Florida Department of Education’s Mental Health Assistance Allocation (MHAA) programs, Resiliency Education, and new Florida Specific Youth Surveys, the state is in full support of CASEL’s SEL Framework.
Here is an example of the 7 Mindsets renewal in Hillsborough County Public Schools, FL. This SEL program is being funded by Florida’s MHAA program. The 7 Mindsets online portal is literally called SELEQUITY!
The funding for this program not only comes from the Florida Department of Education’s Mental Health Assistance Allocation but also from the U.S. Department of Justice (STOP Grant). Yes, The U.S. DOJ is now funding Marxist mental health programs in Florida schools, excuse me—I meant “Resiliency Education”.
Yet another program used in many school districts is Hazel Health, a K12 online medical and mental health care company. In Duval County Florida, the program offers “...health care services for all students, at no cost to families.” It sounds like they don’t consider taxpayer funding a “cost” to taxpayers. In Hillsborough County, FL the funding for this program has come from Florida Department of Education’s participation in the federal government’s taxpayer funded ESSER III program, or American Rescue Plan (ARP). Florida secured 7 billion in funding from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER III).
Check out the ARP monies secured for Florida Public School Districts.
This ARP money was used to fund the Hazel Health contract in Hillsborough County Schools, FL.
Teachers are not mental health professionals. Superficial training does not make a mental health professional, teachers should not be identifying mental health issues in our children, neither should AI or EdTech algorithms for that matter. Yet, teachers are being expected to detect and respond, and I have read about EdTech algorithms that do flag children for possible disabilities, as well as surveil them for using dangerous language.
It will not be long before we see the unqualified misidentify mental health issues. Further, the state legislation and federally funded mental health programs empower the educational system with the authority to collect and act on this information—again turning schools into medical centers.
Here is what happens when your schools become medical centers, in short, we have little power-hungry tyrants running the show:
The state is blurring the lines between Florida’s Department of Education and Florida’s Department of Health.
That is not beneficial when it comes to protecting privacy, given medical data held by a school district in educational record is not covered by HIPAA, but by FERPA, and FERPA does not have breach reporting requirements.
Marketing SEL as “Resiliency” doesn’t change the content. Hillsborough Schools, FL is still using Panorama Surveys (SEL), and 7 Mindsets (SEL), and Second Step (SEL), and ...so on. Resiliency is just a more palatable word being marketed to replace the phrases: Mental Health and Social Emotional Learning.
Remember 7 Mindsets (SEL) is funded by Florida’s Mental Health Assistance Allocation, and Governor and Casey DeSantis supported Resiliency Education, the new name for SEL.
This isn’t the first time the Florida Department of Education has rebranded an unpopular product, take Common Core for example. Florida’s “BEST” Standards were simply an improvement on the previous re-brand of the Common Core State Standards. Unfortunately, “BEST” was not written from scratch, and so not all “vestiges” of Common Core were eliminated as promised by Governor DeSantis.
Schools are no longer centers of education, they are becoming globalist “reimagined education” centers for our children—eliminating the role of parents.
In this 2016 document the World Economic Forum (WEF) encourages blending SEL into EdTech products:
In a 2019 UNESCO issue of The Blue Dot on Social Emotional Learning, we have the urgent call that SEL is “critical to the future of our species”. So, if you do not adopt their SEL programs you are destroying humanity! And...they want your children to become GLOBAL citizens, not US citizens.
They’re telling you EdTech will be used on a massive scale to perform psychological profiling and behavior modification programs to achieve their goals. Believe them when they tell you their plans. Florida’s Department of Education, Governor DeSantis, and Casey DeSantis rolled it out to your children under the guise of “Resiliency Education.”
