Florida's children sacrificed for political contributions

If you need more proof that Florida cares about profits more than its children, you don't have to look any further than what it is doing in our pediatric cardiac units where the state plans to do away with quality standards.

From CNN: In a widely publicized investigation in June, CNN revealed that a program at a Tenet hospital in Florida had failed to live up to state quality standards for children's heart surgery.

Less than two months later, the state decided to get rid of those standards.

That decision came after the giant for-profit hospital chain made contributions to Republican Gov. Rick Scott and his party that dwarfed those the company made to candidates or parties in other states. (kvor.com/news/heart-doctors-outraged-florida-dumps-hospital-standards-after-big-gifts-to-gop/

This is far from the first time Florida has ignored the needs or best interests of its children either; take charter schools for instance. The owners of charter schools have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican legislators and reaped the rewards by having hundreds of millions of dollars diverted from public schools to for-profit charter schools.

Over 300 of these schools have failed, by the way, throwing families and communities in a lurch. Furthermore as a group they perform worse than our public schools.

Whether it is with the children in our public schools or with pediatric heart patients, the Republican legislators in Tallahassee seem more concerned with campaign donations than protecting children.

Isn't it time we said enough is enough and put legislators in Tallahassee who will look out for our children and not their bank accounts.

Chris Guerrieri

Jacksonville

This story was originally published January 21, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Florida's children sacrificed for political contributions ."