Bertha Vazquez.
When Florida's Department of Education released a deeply flawed set of proposed new science standards for the state, Bertha Vazquez — a retired middle school science teacher in Miami, the Director of Education for the Center for Inquiry and the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science, and a recipient of NCSE's Friend of Darwin award — was among the first to react, telling the Orlando Sentinel (September 30, 2026) that Florida would be "moving backward" if it adopted the proposed standards.
After she worked through the proposed standards line by line, she told the Center for Inquiry (October 5, 2026), "The biggest thing I noticed is that all the underlying science is still there, but the scientific vocabulary that organizes that science has disappeared." While good science teachers could cope with that disappearance, she added, "We shouldn't have to depend on individual teachers to restore essential scientific concepts that the state chose not to name." And not all science teachers might do so.
Vazquez encouraged concerned Floridians to take the opportunity to comment on the proposed standards. "I'll warn you," she emphasized, "they are NOT making it easy to comment!" She therefore prepared a helpful step-by-step guide (PDF) to the comment process along with suggestions for specific comments regarding evolution and climate change. Using the guide, it might take 30 minutes to comment in all relevant sections. But, Vazquez added, "it's so important and the effort is absolutely worth it!"
