TAMPA, Fla. — A number of high school teachers are scrambling to make last-minute curriculum changes as districts work to align their lesson plans with new state requirements.

According to Spectrum Bay News 9’s partner newspaper the Tampa Bay Times, students won’t be learning Shakespeare the traditional way.

English teachers plan to assign pages from some of the classics like “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” but students would have to read them in their entirety on their own time. District officials stated the changes are due to revised state teaching standards and the parental rights in education law.

Teachers are directed to stay away from assigning portions of the works with sexual themes.

Hillsborough County School Board member Jessica Vaughn made a public statement on social media describing the manner in which board members found out about the changes:

“There are a plethora of decisions being made at the district level in Hillsborough County that I am not being notified about until either moments before, or right after the information is being released to the public. Many of these decisions are causing a tremendous amount of anxiety and concern within our community, our families and our staff members.

And while I am EXTREMELY frustrated that as a school board member, I am getting much of this information second-hand from the community itself (as opposed to district staff providing me the information), many of the changes are being driven by both state legislation and DOE rulemaking. HCPS is extremely committed to honoring state guidance and the law, as well as protecting our employees.

I am extremely disappointed that the majority of our legislators and the Governor's hand-appointed Department of Education are not being reflective of "parental rights" and are ramming through education laws/rules without thoughtful feedback from the community, without much guidance of how to implement these rules/laws without affecting student achievement, without much employee feedback and with almost no clarity of the penalties associated with these new laws, rules.

Honestly, it feels that much of this is intentional, in order to cause as much chaos in public education as possible, so that the collapse of public education is swift and the agenda of education privatization can move forward with less obstacles.

I spent hours on the phone this morning with frustrated parents (of all partisanship) who are outraged with the direction of public education and who feel like the people who are influencing public education policies have zero stake in public education, and don't have children who utilize our public school system. Parents want their students to be educated and competitive on a national level. Denying access to things like AP psychology, accurate black history, critical thinking and Shakespeare is not benefitting or protecting our children. It's giving them a disadvantage - nationally.

Local school boards are supposed to be able to reflect and support our constituency, but the state is denying us that power by stripping away home rule and targeting school board members who speak up against the current regressive trends in education. That is why we have the highest teacher vacancy in the country.

At the end of the day, our students, families and employees all deserve better. And we should all be demanding a more holistic educational approach from our state leadership and our Department of Education!”

In Pinellas County, AP Psychology teachers are working to revamp their curriculum last minute.

According to teacher Ramsey Aziz, instead of AP Psychology, teachers are being instructed to use the curriculum from Cambridge AICE Psychology now. That’s a separate set of lessons that comes from the United Kingdom.

Aziz says he and his colleagues were given less than a week to prepare for the upcoming school year.

“It’s so detrimental to the students because we’re not prepared. We’re supposed to be the experts in the class,” he said. “Now, you know, if the students, especially like our seniors and juniors who, you know, they actually follow the news and they have access to social media and they’re looking at this information, you know, they’re not going to be confident in us and they should be confident that their teachers are professionals and that they’re experts in their field.”

Each school district is handling the state directive a little differently. In Seminole County, AP Psychology will be replaced with AP Seminar with a focus in psychology, that way students will have the ability to take the AP exam at the end of the semester.

According to Manny Diaz, Florida’s education commissioner, he believes AP Psychology can still be taught in full as long as it’s taught in “a manner that’s age and developmentally appropriate.”