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Scrolling with Hayley
Making Education Great Again with Erika Donalds (Ep.79)
00:48:04
In this episode of Nightly Scroll, I’m joined by OptimaEd Founder Erika Donalds. We discuss making American schools great again by making school choice accessible to all! While woke indoctrination and migrants take over the public school system, Florida leads the way for a better future.
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- [00:00]
Haley
Hello to all my homies in the chat. Happy Friday. If you want to join my homies in the chat, of course you have to do it on Rumble. Rumble.com is the only place you can watch the nightly scroll rumble.com Hailey will bring you to the Bongino Report channel where you can watch me if you want to watch. Later on you can do that. If you want to listen on your favorite podcast platform, you could do that as well. Just search Nightly scroll with Haley on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your shows. And I've got a big shop show for you tonight. I've got a very exciting guest on deck and we're talking all about education. Education in America needs an overhaul and as we know, President Trump wants to do away with the Department of Education altogether. And when you combine the poor proficiency levels with the rise in woke indoctrination, you can't blame our president for wanting change and fast. My next guest is sounding the alarm on leftist unions, school boards, the overcrowding and underfunding of our schools, and what's inside that big beautiful bill that could help make school choice accessible and turn all of this around for the better. Her husband, Florida Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, has been called an education warrior in the GOP and should he be elected as governor, the Donalds family is committed to to bringing families to the forefront of their children's education, not big government. Amen to that. America First Policy Institute Chair of Education Opportunity and Optima Ed founder Erica Donalds joins me on this episode of Nightly Scroll. Erica, thank you so much for joining me on Nightly scroll. I'm so excited that you're here.
- [01:51]
Erica Donalds
Oh I'm so excited to talk to you Haley. Thanks for having me.
- [01:54]
Haley
Of course your family is very inspirational. I was just talking to you right before the show started about how I saw your husband, Congressman Byron Donald speaking at this Martin County GOP dinner and there were all of these wonderful children in the area who are writing letters and it was just very, very sweet. And you have your own very wonderful children. Is your family what inspired you to get into this space and try to make education great again?
- [02:20]
Erica Donalds
Oh, absolutely. Byron and I were living our lives in our careers being successful, bought a house in the area where we wanted our kids to go to school like most middle class families. But we found out quickly that one size doesn't fit all and our middle son did not do well at the a school that we were assigned to. That's when we discovered school choice or in fact the lack of School choice I scrambled as a mom. I didn't like that my son hated going to school. And they also had told me that he needed to be on medication, as many of them do when children are bored in school or he was going to have to go into a special classroom. I immediately pulled him out of public school, found a small classical Christian school to put him in. And I didn't even know there were different types of curriculum. But when I picked up our son after that first day of school in his new environment, he was smiling ear to ear. He loved what he was learning. He couldn't wait to tell me all about it. And from then on, he thrived in classical environments. Just graduated from high school with a full ride scholarship to his number one school. So we're really proud of him. He never needed a special classroom. But at that point I knew I needed to help the other Darrens out there, the other moms like me who were desperate for an option and who are likely trapped in the traditional public school defined by their zip code.
- [03:47]
Haley
Yeah. And they feel like, okay, I just, I just found this house. Houses are hard enough to find. And then it's like, oh, we don't like the school district or oh, our, our child isn't thriving here. So you have created schools in your area or in my area rather. So talk to me about this.
- [04:05]
Erica Donalds
Yeah, I actually got involved at first volunteering to help a charter school in my community. We did not have any charter schools at the time. That was back in 2012, 2014. Then I ran for school board thinking that was how I was going to impact change and bring options and equality to the families that I was talking to every day who wanted something outside the traditional public school. I found out that being on the school board does not mean that you're making change. In fact, I was roadblocked at every turn and, and that's where my hatred for the teachers unions came from. But after I decided not to re run again for school board, I did open my first charter school under my own foundation in Martin County, Treasure Coast Classical Academy. And subsequently opened five more charter schools and private schools in multiple states as well as a virtual option, the world's first virtual school, Optima Academy online. Just providing a lot of different high quality options for families like mine.
- [05:03]
Haley
That's wonderful. So you mentioned that you hate school boards and you hate the school unions, the teachers unions. So let's get into the teachers unions and why even if you sign up to or you're elected to a school board, you're not affecting change. Why is that?
- [05:19]
Erica Donalds
Well, I was in the minority and even if you're in the majority, if you have five people who all agree on the dais, you can pass policy. But in my case, there were 7,500 employees who majority of which were working against us every single day. There were directives coming out of the Obama administration telling us that we had to allow sharing bathrooms depending on gender identity. This was back in 2014, 2015. So this battle has been going on a long time and we would make decisions, even those that I agreed with on the school board, that were not trickling down to the actual classroom. In my case, it took me three and a half years just to get something on the agenda because I was in the minority on the school board and the unions were blocking every single reform that we could possibly bring about and put pretty much focusing more on the adults than what is in the best interest of children. And that's what we found that they do across the country.
- [06:14]
Haley
Wow. I mean, it's really concerning to hear that even in 2014 this, I mean the trans bathroom issue and the trans and sports and we can get into this later because I do want to get into this, but this has become such an issue now. But it's been going on for a very long time. And even in a red state like Florida, parents and children are not safe from this ideology. And you're saying that this is stemming from the teachers unions and you know, the Obama administration. So Randy Weingarten is the head of the American Federation of the Teachers unions. She represents 1.7 million education workers in this country. She is a deep blue Democrat. She was just protesting in LA on behalf of these no kings anti ice riots. She just resigned from her post at the DNC after decades. How has education become so partisan?
- [07:11]
Erica Donalds
Well, the teachers unions have become these left wing political organizations. 98% of their donations go to Democrat candidates. And there, if you look at the agenda on their conferences, for example, it's all about climate, ideology, racial justice, dei, all kinds of left wing subject areas, not how are you going to get the children to read proficiently. We know we need that in this country. Only one in three students in our country are reading proficiently. But the unions have always been focused on advancing a left wing ideology, advancing abortion rights and things like that. We're seeing that out of Randy Weingarten and many other union leaders who show up at these protests. And they are themselves, as you said, they're Democrat leaders. It was unreported previously that Randy Weingarten had been on the DNC board for 23 years. This is the person that is leading the agenda for the teachers union. Real quick, I think it's important that we differentiate though between teachers and the union. The union is made up of political activists, people like Randy Weingarten and Ms. Pringle as well, and the other unions. But there are a lot of great teachers out there who don't want to be a part of this. And that's why school choice is so important because it not only gives families options, but it also gives educators options outside of being high school.
- [08:40]
Haley
Right. And you know, schools like yours, I'm sure level headed teachers who don't want to push this woke indoctrination, they're going to sign up to work at that kind of a school, these Christian classical schools, because they know that they're not going to have to push the trans agenda or anything else. So how are the teachers unions and the school board connected? Are there, is there a bunch of political activism going on to get woke school board members elected?
- [09:07]
Erica Donalds
1,000%. When I went to my first school board meeting and saw how the school board members had no care whatsoever to what parents were saying when they came for public comment. This was back in 2013, I noticed that these school board members, all they were was former union members, former principals, former administrators and they were elected to the school board continuing on with their salary and their pension. No parents of school age children were represented at the time. And that's one of the reasons why I ran for office. And I know that around the country since then there's been a whole movement of parents that have noticed the same thing. That these school boards, even in a red state like Florida, are made up of former union members and activists and they are the ones who are rallying their grassroots, their union grassroots, including the other unions as well because they do stick together and they all work together to get union representation on the school board. And, and you end up with the school board negotiating with themselves, the union negotiating with themselves on both sides of the table and the taxpayers are the ones that are putting the bill.
- [10:14]
Haley
Ugh, you know, these education overlords, they want parents out of the picture, which is very scary because chil, you know, you have your child, you want to send them to a good school. You know, parents, it's, it must be very hard. I don't have children. I hope I have children one day, but I'm not in that stage of life right now. But it's going to be Very hard to send your child to school and trust that they're in good hands. And especially with these overlords, like I call them, wanting parents out of the picture at every turn. So how is Florida leading the charge to bring parents back into the fold where they belong?
- [10:55]
Erica Donalds
Well, we just celebrated our 17th spot passing Universal school choice. And of course, Florida has been the model for decades now in expanding school choice for parents. Education freedom, as we're now calling it, means that every parent has multiple high quality options to choose from when it comes to how their child is going to be educated. That is the free market competition that brings better quality, better access to everyone, and allows people to select a school that not only performs academically, but and is aligned with their interest in terms of how their student learns. But more and more families are looking for values alignment from the school. Just as you said, you don't want to send your child for eight hours a day to a place where you don't trust that the values you uphold at home are going to be held by the people who are influencing your child. And so families are looking for that values alignment, whether it be religious or non religious, doesn't matter. It's more about, do I trust this person with my most precious thing, my children, all day, every day, inspiring their minds and really teaching them not only how to learn, but the knowledge that's necessary to succeed in life. And so Florida has a scholarship program where every single family for every child gets about $9,000 to use towards a private school education or homeschooling expenses, including online learning, other curriculum, tutoring, sports programs. But the great news is, and I know we're going to talk about this, this is now going to be available across the country if the reconciliation bill, the one big beautiful bill, passes in its current form.
- [12:33]
Haley
Yeah, I want to get to that in just a moment, but I feel like in terms of parents having their eyes opened to what's going on in school, I think Covid, as horrible as it was, really was the catalyst for parents to start paying attention to what was happening in their children's schools. And it all started in Loudoun County, Virginia, with, you know, trans and the wrong bathroom or the wrong locker room and all that, the chaos that ensued at the school board meetings and the, you know, it was just, it was wild. And then once we saw what was happening there, I feel like parents across the country, especially when kids were ripped out of school and they were doing zoom school at home, then parents really had a front row seat to what was being taught in school. And not just on the indoctrination front. But Covid slowed down a lot of progress in schools. I know you were talking about proficiency levels. And in terms of how we rank against other countries in math, it's not good. And like you said, in reading, it's not good. So how can we make American proficiency in math and science and reading great again if we have woke teachers, woke school boards, and their priorities aren't in the right place?
- [13:49]
Erica Donalds
Well, you're absolutely right that Covid pulled back the curtain for families. Even my own neighbors were defending the public schools. Oh, it's an A school. And they thought that that meant that it was. It was doing well. But once the children were at home and parents were looking over their shoulders, seeing, wait a second. That doesn't look difficult at all. Why are my children finishing in an hour? They should be. They should have eight hours worth of work. I'm sending them to school every day. Parents to realize how much FL Bluff is in the curriculum. And they did start to revolt. That's why the parents were going to these school board meetings. Not just to get them back in school, not just to get the masks off of them, the mask mandates. But also because they were appalled at the lack of rigor in our classrooms and the distractions with a lot of this social, emotional learning and the ideology that they were seeing in the curriculum that seemed to be more of a focus than reading and math. And so we have this perfect storm Covid happening that was pulling everyone out of school and keeping them back from learning and therefore affecting their performance. But also the backlash against the ideology that families were seeing. And that's why we went from zero states with universal choice to now 17 states with universal choice in just a short amount of time. And that continues to grow. And. And we're now over 80% support across the country, including Democrats and independents.
- [15:15]
Haley
I was just gonna ask you that. I was just gonna ask you that because you said that there are 17 states that have implemented this school choice. Are states like New York and California, Are they buying into this at all?
- [15:30]
Erica Donalds
Not. I would say the states are not buying into it because the Democrats that control those states are still bought and paid for by the teachers unions. But the polls are showing that this is now an 8020 issue. It's right there up with the boys and girls bathrooms. And Democrats are on the wrong side of history with this. I think that those blue states are going to continue to see an exodus from their state. It started with policies around Covid. It's now tax policies. But soon I think it's going to be school choice. If I am a person that can work from anywhere and many professionals now are nowadays, why would I stay in New York where I have high taxes and my student has to go to his own public school or I'm coming out of pocket for private school? If I go to Florida, I get $9,000 per student to send my child to private school. So there's going to have to be a competition on school choice policy, and I believe there will be against these blue states.
- [16:31]
Haley
Well, I think if New Yorkers get their way and they elect this democratic socialist, Zoran Mandani, you're going to see a lot more people coming to New York. I mean, coming to Florida from New York. Yeah. Are you ready for that?
- [16:47]
Erica Donalds
Well, we hope that they don't bring their New York values with them. It's been so far, so good ever since we've had this huge influx of new residents in Florida. We've gone from being in a deficit on Republican voters of 700,000 to now 1.3 million more Republican voters than Democrats. So so far, they have not brought their Democrat voting records with them. We hope that that continues. And it's up to us as well to let these individuals know, voters, that Republicans are the party of parents. We're the party of parents rights. We're the ones who are fighting to make sure that schools are not keeping secrets about your children from you and making sure that they're not going against your values at home behind your back at school. We're the ones fighting for school choice to make sure that if your student has a special need and needs some sort of a special curriculum to make them thrive, you have the option to go somewhere else and not where we tell you to go, meaning we the government. So we're fighting for parents every step of the way.
- [17:49]
Haley
Yeah. Amen. And when you said, you know, parental rights in education, I remember when Governor Ron DeSantis passed that bill, the parental rights in education, and you know, the left called it the don't say Gay Bill because of, you know, their Trump. Derangement. Desantis, derangement, whatever you want to call it. But that entire thing totally exposed the left as a group of essentially predators who want children to learn about sex and sexuality in school before fourth grade. This is a very common sense legislation piece of legislation where you could even talk about it after fourth grade. But this was just before fourth grade. And they were like, this is crazy. I mean, why do you think such woke Leftist people want to go into education. I don't, I don't really expect you to know the answer to this, but just do you have any thoughts? Because I don't know what it is about it, but I just feel like I see all these videos online of these teachers talking about their pronouns and trying to push this stuff on kids. I don't get it. Why?
- [18:54]
Erica Donalds
Well, it does start also with the teacher colleges. Those need to be completely reformed because they are actually not preparing teachers to be effective academically in the classroom. Instead, a lot of the teacher colleges are teaching about these kinds of ideologies. So those we don't hire in our schools, we never hire teacher or education majors. We try to stick to majors of history, English, mathematics, and then we help to teach them how to teach in a classroom because we don't want to unteach the ideologies that are in these education colleges. Those definitely need to be reformed. But there are, of course there are teachers, great teachers in our schools that want to do right by children and we want to make sure that they're protected. Another great law that was passed in Florida is paycheck protection, which means that districts cannot pull union dues out on behalf of the unions anymore. They've been doing that for decades and so the teachers never even see that money. Now the teachers will have to sign up for the unions themselves and pay those due themselves. And we saw union membership drop significantly in the Florida after paycheck protection was passed.
- [20:05]
Haley
Yeah. How do we incentivize more level headed? I won't even go as far as to say conservative. Just people who aren't going to push this. Like teachers are underfunded, they're stressed, they're overwhelmed. I know we, I you sent over information about how even in Florida and in states everywhere, classrooms are being overrun with illegal migrants. This is shocking. I mean, how can teachers, even in red states, how can they be expected to provide children the attention that they need, the one on one attention that they don't even get anyway when there are illegals in the classrooms. This is insane.
- [20:49]
Erica Donalds
This is a really difficult conversation to have. The Supreme Court some time ago said that we have to educate every child in the United States regardless of their legal status. But what that means with the huge migrant influx that the Biden administration allowed, is that our already stretched resources in our public schools are now stretched even further for an influx of students who do not speak English, who are behind academically even in their own country and in their own language. And then they additionally have all of these social problems, emotional problems, behavior problems. And so the additional staff that are being hired are not to catch up American students from COVID or to fix the proficiency rates that we've just been talking about, but instead to provide social services and additional support to illegal migrant children. Now, we all care about children. I want every child in the world to succeed. But we cannot do that at the expense of our American citizen children who deserve the opportunity of the American dream. And especially their tax paying parents who trust in the public education system because that's what they've been told to do, that if you send your child to public school K to 12, they will be prepared to succeed in career or, or college. We have broken that promise to the American people and broken it even more by allowing this influx.
- [22:10]
Haley
Oh, it's just, it's depressing to talk about and I know that we have a lot of good things coming that we're going to get to in just a moment. But you know, you said that we need to put the American student first. And not only that, we just saw in California a violation of Title 9. Not only do we have to put American students first, we have to put girls first. You know, there are girls who are basically being set up to fail by at a very young age. Because this trans athletes and sports issue, it starts very young. I, I have a friend who was a D1 athlete in college and this was years ago, this was probably 2018 when we had this conversation and like we were just talking about, I mean, this was starting in the Obama administration, 2014, but we were having this conversation a little after that. And she said, but how many trans athletes are there? You know, how many students or how many athletes is this really affecting? And I told her, I said, we're going, mark my words, this is going to grow because if you let it happen, it's going to fester. And then you're going to set the example that we are going to let men compete in women's sports. And I think it's a lesson to be learned that if you put one man in the, the group or the team or the whatever, if he comes first, the woman that was supposed to come in first or the girl that was supposed to come in first comes in second, second comes in third, third comes in fourth, so on and so forth. So it actually affects all of them. And you know, there are concerned parents and grandparents who watch this show. They hear stories of schools transitioning kids without parental knowledge. You know, are lawsuits from the Trump administration the only hope in convincing Blue state schools to not push this agenda.
- [24:07]
Erica Donalds
Well, kudos to the Trump administration and Secretary McMahon and her team for investigating and then finding fault with California and their interscholastic foundation in violation of Title 9. We all watched as this young man took the titles and the awards away from those girls. And we know that we're well over a thousand now, championships worldwide, just since we started keeping track of this. And to your point, it doesn't mean that 1,000 girls were displaced, and it means tens of thousands of girls were displaced because of that one boy that was involved in that particular sport. I do believe that the threat of taking funds away, federal funds, will be a deterrent. We will see now with California and whether they choose to comply with the 10 days requirement. But Maine, for example, was another one where they threatened their, their federal funding and they did end up complying. So I do think it is a deterrent for these states. I appreciate President Trump and Secretary McMahon standing firm for these girls and protecting them, because this cannot continue. It is totally unfair. I was a high school athlete as well. It's something that I credit to really saving my life and making sure that I went to college. It's the reason I'm sitting here today, because I cared about playing basketball. And if there was a boy that was able to be on our team, listen, I wasn't very good. I might have been the one that didn't beat the team as a result. So I definitely have a very soft spot in my heart for these female athletes that have been put in such a terrible position, not only to lose out on these opportunities, but also to have men in their private spaces, violating them in a really sensitive way. And I know that has emotionally affected them. I've talked to some of them myself. It's something that has to stop. And. And thank goodness for President Trump for standing up for these girls.
- [26:06]
Haley
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And speaking of President Trump and the big, beautiful bill, there are educational tax credits in this bill. This does more. And I want to get your take on this in general, but to me, this does more to bring equity. You know, the left talks about DEI and making everything equitable for people. This does more to bring equity to the forefront of education than anything Dems have ever done.
- [26:34]
Erica Donalds
It does. And it is a transformational change to our education system. The Education Choice for Children act is legislation that we have been fighting for for about 10 years now, and it has made its way into the one big, beautiful bill. It's actually in both the House and the Senate version. This is a Tax credit scholarship that allows individuals a dollar for dollar tax credit to donate to a scholarship funding organization. Those scholarship funding organizations turn around and provide scholarships to parents for their children to go to the private school of their choice or to use it for homeschool expenses. It's a permanent tax credit. It's $4 billion right now per year in the Senate version of the bill, which more than doubles the number of students that will be able to take advantage of school choice across the country, including every state, all 50 states, blue states. We are here to come to the rescue to make sure that you have school choice too.
- [27:31]
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- [27:58]
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- [28:21]
Erica Donalds
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- [28:28]
Haley
Mobile.Com wow, that's incredible. And honestly, when you talk about school choice, I never think about homeschooling, but I'm so grateful that that's in the big beautiful bill. And these parents who want to choose to maybe they want to live off the grid after sending their child to public school and having a horrible experience. And maybe they want to take their family out of these blue cities and they want to go buy some land and build a house. And a lot of families want to do that. This is like the new conservative American dream is just going to live off the grid as far away from the government as humanly possible. And I don't blame them. So this is so wonderful to see that homeschooling is part of school choice. I've never even really thought about it like that.
- [29:11]
Erica Donalds
I think we're also going to need some new definitions because so many families that school at home or their child is learning at home through online courses or maybe a self guided curriculum. They don't consider themselves homeschool families. Right. But some of them are attending hybrid programs as well. I think that the future of education choice is actually very customized. That's how everything else in our lives are. And with these education scholarship accounts, including what's in the big beautiful bill, it allows scholarship funding organizations to let parents say, you know what, I'm going to have my child go in person for math and science. They need a little extra help there. Maybe I use a tutoring center for their reading instruction. Maybe they do a self guided course for history because they're really into it and they're just going to read and devour those courses. Maybe I want to teach them music because I'm gifted in music, but I'm going to customize the entire educational experience to align with my child's interests, their needs academically or, or otherwise, and our family's lifestyle. Because if I'm working from home or I get off on Fridays, maybe I want my child to be able to be off with me on Fridays and do all of their schoolwork Monday through Thursday. I definitely see a future of customized and more innovative education options. And the ECCA and other education scholarship accounts across the country are helping to make that happen.
- [30:34]
Haley
That would be very, very cool. I personally, I'm hoping, horrible at math, I was bad at science. I'm very creative. I was good in history, writing. I, I knew from a very young age I was never going to be a mathematician. I was never gonna be, you know, super business savvy. I knew that I was gonna do something creative. And to think that there could be a day where children are given this customized education system where they don't have to study these things that, you know, obviously the bare minimum, of course, you have to learn math and science and all these things and we should do that. But you get to a certain point, I went to college, I was forced to take calculus, I was forced to take all these things. I'm like, this is insane. I'm not good at this. I don't want to do this. And you know, for some kids, they don't know what they want to do. They don't know. And I think for a lot of, in a lot of ways this liberal arts kind of system could be good for kids who don't know what they want to do. They can try a little bit of everything and maybe figure it out. People go to college to find themselves, I guess. But I knew very young in Middle school that I was bad at math and I was never going to study anything like that. So this is very, this is very, very cool. I want to talk about Doge and how President Trump is vowing to dismantle the Department of Education. How is that going to impact American students?
- [31:57]
Erica Donalds
People should understand that the Department of Education does not educate a single child. It is a pass through for federal money to get down into schools eventually. Some of it helping students, especially low income students and students with disabilities. President Trump has said he's going to continue the federal funding, but he's going to eliminate some of the bureaucracy between the student and the federal government. If you think about it, when there is a directive from the federal government that says use this money to do this for this student, the state has to pass the money onto the district. The district's passing it onto the school. The school is putting it into the classroom. The teacher is actually serving the student. The student that is recorded by the teacher to the person at the school, to the person at the district, to the person at the state, to the person at the federal government. All of these bureaucrats are getting paid with this money and it's not reaching the intended purpose. So getting rid of the Department of Education eliminates at least one layer. Streamlining that funding so that there aren't as many requirements on it to be reported back up is another savings that's going to let children get more of the services that they deserve. And frankly, the states need to be the ones held accountable for the results of their students. Right now. States, it's very easy for them to blame the federal government because of its involvement. I want to make sure that parents, when they're unhappy with the performance of their student, school or their community or their state, they know exactly who to hold accountable for that. It's their governor that appoints the Secretary of Education or it's the elected Secretary of Education or it's their school board. But it's not some bureaucrat in Washington that they will never be able to hold accountable unless they are voting for the president or voting for their member of Congress who again cannot hold anyone accountable in the federal Department of Education. There's no accountability when it comes to the federal government involvement in education. We need to get rid of as much of it as possible.
- [33:52]
Haley
Yeah. And like we were talking about before, obviously with Randy Weingarten and the teachers union and all the impact that they have on even red states. So I feel like people leave a New York or California, they move to, I'm Sorry, they move. Yeah, New York, California, they move to Florida and they think, great, our kids are going to get a great education. Meanwhile, the overlords are still these leftists from New York and California. So this is really. I joke all the time because everyone calls Trump a fascist and I say he's the worst fascist ever because he's trying to take power away from big government and bring it back down to the states. I mean this is putting the power back into parents hands and I absolutely love to see it. Another thing I love to see is Florida banning phones in schools and seeing results. Can you talk about this?
- [34:45]
Erica Donalds
We're seeing this as a trend across the country and I struggle a little bit because I want to make sure that our conservative friends understand that technology is not bad, even technology in the classroom. And I used to be one of those parents that was very anti tech in the classroom because I thought it was such a distraction. And it is if it is a personal device. So I'm very strongly in favor of the Florida law and others that are banning personal devices in the classroom. We do not need students scrolling on TikTok doing Snapchat when they're supposed to be paying attention in class. However, there are also great technologies and innovations that we should embrace if we are going to stay globally competitive when it comes to our academic performance. AI can be used very efficiently in the classroom by both students and teachers. Not to cheat, but to help students to understand information in the way that they learn best. One of the schools that I started is Optima Academy Online. It's a virtual reality school. And our VR curriculum is being used in classrooms so that students are not reading about a cell and the parts of the cell they're going into VR and they can actually take a cell apart, they can walk through it, they can label it in three dimensions, and it helps them in that immersive environment to really remember what they're learning. And so technology in itself is not bad, but using it incorrectly or unwisely is bad. And having personal devices in the classroom is a distraction. But our schools need to be free to invest in the latest technology and try it with their students to see how it will help them learn the basics and do better when it comes to their academic achievement.
- [36:30]
Haley
Yeah, I wonder about how children using phones, how this impacts their brain function, because when I was in college I did a study on what they call the Google effect. And essentially our short term memory is so bad because our brains know we actually don't have to learn this information. We don't actually have to memorize it because our brain memorizes instead that you can just go to Google and find the information again so they don't take up the brain power literally to remember things or learn things. Because Google's right there. And I feel like with children now and they're on these personal devices, they have TikTok, they have Snapchat and I'm a huge proponent. I love social Media, I love TikTok, I'm one of the only conservatives that loves TikTok but I don't want kids on it. I don't think it's good for kids. And I think if we're scrolling so much for so long, especially at a young age, that that's going to have permanent damage on kids brains. Like we don't even know what they're going to be like as adults. And I wonder if you ban these products, these personal devices in classrooms, are they going to even be able to learn? It's almost like taking a drug away from an addict.
- [37:50]
Erica Donalds
It is. And it's shown to be the same effect as an addiction, especially with our, our teenage students. But I'm also a huge proponent of classical education. You need to build a foundation of knowledge and content rich curriculum in your classroom where students are memorizing the phonetic sounds, they're memorizing poetry in the early years where you're building a foundation of knowledge so that later they can draw upon that information for reading comprehension and the things that they need later on. You know, we're doing explicit phonics, explicit grammar, reading novels, memorizing poetry before they ever touch a device in school. They need all of those foundations to really succeed. And I think that classical schools across the country, the proliferation of them and parents really discovering what a traditional education looks like and how those students perform is going to continue to infiltrate all types of schools, including the public schools because of that free market competition. When parents have a choice, we see them fleeing to these types of classical education where it's more of a focus on the basics and the traditional learning in those early years that students so desperately need. Yeah.
- [39:04]
Haley
You know, on the other hand, because we're talking about these technology and awesome technology that you're talking about virtual reality and all this, we have to talk about AI and how we can use this for good and not for evil. But it seems like there are a lot of kids, maybe more high school age, college age, that are relying on AI probably too much to help them with homework or even social skills. So how can we use AI for Good.
- [39:35]
Erica Donalds
Well, there's certainly a lot of use case for AI in education. One example in Optima Academy Online we're building avatars of the founding fathers and other historical figures, putting a small language model behind them. And that just means a trusted data set so that students can interview Thomas Jefferson, they can interview Rosa Parks in an avatar format. And using AI to really have the learning come alive, on the other hand, you do have to teach kids how to use it wisely when they're using it to complete assignments. I liken it to a calculator. We're not going to stop teaching kids how to do math by hand. Of course they need to know all of those basics and they need to get to a certain point before we let them use the calculator. That's going to help them to do much more advanced and complicated mathematics beyond what they're going to do by hand. AI is the same way. They're going to need to learn to write by hand and know their grammar and all the parts of speech, all of those things. They need the basics. But if we teach them properly, they could actually use AI to advance their learning, their writing, their reading and their performance. Just like a calculator allows us to do much more complex mathematics than we can do by hand. But we, the adults, we have to learn it. We have to learn how to teach it to them. And we're right now in this vicious AI cycle, right? They use it to do assignments, we use it to check to see if they used AI and back and forth. But that's the most simplistic way of using it. Just like Google was in the very beginning. It is going to really advance education and help us to meet students needs individually. We should embrace it, learn how to use it well and teach our students how to use it effectively.
- [41:21]
Haley
Yeah, and I was just thinking, I was kind of laughing to myself because this conversation reminded me of when I was in high school and kids are going to find a way to cheat regardless. I remember in high school we were reading Shakespeare and there was a website called no Fear Shakespeare that would basically translate each line from, from, you know, Shakespeare to just modern day English. So you know, if kids are using AI for that, you know, we kind of did the same thing. I'm not saying it's good, but kids are going to find a way to do it anyway. I want to talk about the future of Florida because your husband, Florida Congressman Byron Donalds is running for governor. And obviously education is something you're very passionate about. You have a young family you're already building schools in Florida. So what's the first issue you would tackle as first lady of Florida if he's elected?
- [42:08]
Erica Donalds
Well, education actually got Byron into politics as well. When he ran for state house, that was one of his main pillars. He was the one who filed the bill to allow parents and community members to see the instructional materials that are in their classrooms. That was the first bill of its kind in the country. And so this has always been a passion of both of ours to give parents the right to, to control their children's education. And I wanna see every single dollar spent on education to be parent directed. Right now we're almost there in Florida, but there's a lot more money that goes directly to the districts that parents never see. Parents should be able to see exactly how much is spent on their children and they should be able to direct those funds. There's also a lot more that we could do in incentivizing and holding schools accountable for mastery. And you know, we're in the top 10 in the country when it comes to our students academic performance. That's not good enough for us. We want to be number one, not only in the country, but in the world. And we have to be if we're going to maintain this great republic, this great country that we live in and we're going to be globally competitive and bring all of the jobs, the economy that we need here in America and of course here in Florida.
- [43:24]
Haley
Well, that makes me very excited. I just moved to Florida what four months ago now. I was living in Tennessee, I grew up in New York so I've been just moving further south and further Deep Red and I'm very excited. This conversation has gotten me excited. I feel like I'm in the right state to hopefully meet someone and raise a family and send them to a good school. Maybe one of these classical schools, maybe one of your optima ed schools would be very, very cool. I know that education is obviously something that's very important to you and to your family. What are some other causes that you would make part of your platform? What's some other things that gets you going?
- [44:01]
Erica Donalds
Well, near and dear to my heart are children who are in difficult situations. I was raised in a difficult situation. My parents divorced when I was 11 and after that I had a very rough time in my teenage years. Thankful for like girls, sports that helped to save me, but it could have gone really the wrong way. So students in the Department of Juvenile Justice, I feel like we could do a lot better with helping them to re enter into school and make sure that their education doesn't miss a beat when they're in those facilities, really helping them to get on a pathway to success. Students who are in foster care, that's another one. That's just something I definitely want to make sure that we do right by those children. Not only is it a biblical calling, but just something that there's no reason why those children shouldn't be surrounded by love and support, everything that we can possibly give them in order to put them on a pathway to success. Every one of these kids deserves the American dream. Every one of them deserves the love and support of their state and their community. And so I want to reach kids exactly where they are, no matter where they are, no matter what they've done, no matter where they come from, they and help them to reach the success that I've been able to enjoy here in Florida, despite my upbringing and circumstances.
- [45:18]
Haley
Well, I think giving every child the American dream is a great way to end this interview. Erica, I want to say thank you for joining me. Where can people find out more about Optima Ed? Where can people find. Very, very cool. Erica, thank you so, so much for being here on Nightly Scroll. I appreciate it.
- [45:57]
Erica Donalds
Thanks so much for having me. It was a fun conversation.
- [46:01]
Haley
Wow. Great interview. As you know, I care very, very deeply about our children, keeping them safe, keeping them protected, protecting their innocence, and of course, giving them the education that they deserve. And I loved that Erica said every child deserves the American dream and education is a huge, huge part of that. So I thank her very much for coming on this show and as a new Florida resident, very cool to meet our potential first lady of Florida. Hopefully that all pans out for us. Thank you for watching this episode of Nightly Scroll. I hope all of you have a great weekend, a safe weekend and a have follow me on social media in the meantime at Haley Karenia, on most platforms, on Truth Social, on Tik Tok, on X, on Instagram, all the ones that count. And I will see you right back here on Monday. Bye.