Florida ranks dead last in average teacher pay — for the second consecutive year. The result is exactly what you would expect: 4,096 teaching positions sit vacant mid-year, leaving hundreds of thousands of students without a full-time, qualified instructor. More than 59,000 core academic courses are being taught by teachers who are not certified in the subject they are teaching. Over 10,000 Exceptional Student Education courses — for the children who need the most help — are staffed by people who are not trained to teach them.
Michael R. has been teaching in Broward County for 22 years. He loves his students. But his rent went up $400 a month and his salary went up $1,200 for the entire year. He is not asking to get rich. He is asking to not have to choose between teaching and paying his electric bill. Meanwhile, reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have fallen to their lowest levels in two decades. The system is not broke. It is spending record amounts. The money is just going everywhere except the classroom.
When parents are given an exit, they take it. In 2025, 120,000 Florida families applied for school choice scholarships — double the previous year. Today, 51% of Florida students attend something other than a traditional public school. Parents are voting with their feet because the system has stopped earning their trust.
Sources: NEA Rankings · FL DOE · NAEP · Step Up For StudentsSeventy-six percent of Florida voters say parents — not the government — should have primary authority over their children's education. Yet across the country, parents have been systematically shut out of the decisions that matter most. When they object to what is being taught, they are dismissed. When they ask to see the curriculum, they are given bureaucratic runarounds. When they show up at school board meetings to demand answers, they are told the experts know better.
Angela T. in Jacksonville went to a school board meeting to ask about a book her ten-year-old brought home. The board told her she did not understand the curriculum. She understood it fine. That is why she was there. This is not an isolated incident. It is the standard operating procedure of an education establishment that treats parents as an inconvenience to be managed rather than the primary stakeholders in their children's future.
Meanwhile, CRT and gender ideology have been imported into classrooms under the banner of "inclusion," while schools hide information from parents about their own children. Age-inappropriate sexual content has infiltrated school libraries. The system does not just exclude parents — it actively works around them. Chris Gleason will fight for a federal Parents' Bill of Rights guaranteeing the right to review all instructional materials, opt out of sensitive content, access educational and health records, and be heard at school board meetings without retaliation.
Sources: Gallup · EdChoice · FL Parental Rights in Education ActThe National Education Association raised $27 million in the 2024 election cycle. Ninety-nine percent of its direct contributions went to one party. The American Federation of Teachers spent $46.9 million on political activities in a single fiscal year. These are not education organizations. They are political machines that funnel money to Democratic candidates and left-wing causes while claiming to speak for teachers — the same teachers they rank fiftieth in pay.
During COVID, union leaders lobbied the CDC to keep schools closed, writing the actual language of the reopening guidance that locked millions of children out of classrooms. The cost: an estimated $31 trillion in lifetime earnings lost for pandemic-era students and a 51% spike in suicide attempts among teenage girls. Union bosses got paid. Children paid the price. And the corruption is not just political — it is financial. In January 2025, the president and executive vice president of Jacksonville's own Duval Teachers United were indicted for stealing $2.6 million in union funds. The AFT's D.C. chapter president was sentenced to nine years for embezzling $4.6 million. The Chicago Teachers Union president fought school choice publicly while secretly sending her own child to private school — on a salary of nearly $300,000.
Chris Gleason will fight for a Teacher Freedom Act protecting every educator's right to leave the union without retaliation, and push to strip federal funding from any union that spends member dues on political activities without explicit individual consent.
Sources: FEC · OpenSecrets · DOJ · CDC FOIA · Dartmouth/HarvardThe money isn't the problem. The system is. Chris will break the education cartel and put parents back in charge.
“My daughter has dyslexia. Her public school told us she was doing fine. She was reading two grade levels behind. We used a scholarship to move her to a private school that specializes in learning differences. In one year she caught up. One year. The public school had three years and did nothing. That scholarship saved her future.”Sarah H. · Orlando, FL · Scholarship Parent
Education works best when parents are empowered, schools are accountable, and classrooms focus on the knowledge and skills that prepare children for life — not the political agendas that prepare them for activism. The education establishment has had decades and trillions of dollars to prove it can do the job. The scores say it cannot. The vacancies say it will not. The exodus says parents already know.
Chris Gleason is running for the United States Senate to give every Florida parent the power to choose the best school for their child, protect their rights at the schoolhouse door, and break the grip of a system that answers to unions and bureaucrats instead of families.
Help Chris fight for school choice, parental rights, and an education system that actually works.
Every dollar you contribute funds the fight to expand school choice, protect parental rights, and put the focus back on reading, writing, and math — where it belongs.
Read the Full Plan — Five Policy Planks, Evidence, and the NumbersEvery dollar fuels the fight. Every volunteer multiplies our reach. Florida deserves a Senator who answers to the people.