I’ve been watching Florida’s education landscape for 20 years. If the changes were distilled into a Florida Man meme, the meme might say, “Holy smokes! Florida Man got something right!” I left a career in journalism after my own evolution on school choice made me realize how fundamental it is to a fair, high-functioning education system. Florida’s system, once a national joke, is showing the rest of America what’s possible. How amazing it is to be here at this moment in history. When it comes to learning options, there are 1,000 flowers in bloom – and thousands of people, from all walks of life and all points on the political spectrum, worked together to make it happen. How gratifying to be part of such a diverse, dynamic movement – and to help tell its story.

I was a newspaper reporter my entire adult life; my first story was published when I was 18. I worked in Tallahassee, Fla., Thomasville, Ga., Albany, Ga., and Panama City, Fla., before becoming the environmental reporter at the Gainesville (Fla.) Sun in 1997. I joined the Tampa Bay Times, the state’s biggest and most influential newspaper, in 2002, and I was the TBT’s state education reporter from 2004 to 2012. It feels like bragging to mention it, but I won more than 20 reporting awards, including three from the Education Writers Association, and I was nominated for two Pulitzers.

I study Florida. I’m slogging my way, one course at a time, through a master’s degree Program in Florida Studies at the University of South Florida. I got halfway through a similar program in the 1990s before I was derailed by delusions of being a rock star. My academic focus is on Rosenwald schools, segregation-era schools that flourished throughout the South for a half century before integration and still hold ironic lessons for public education today.

Reach me at rmatus@sufs.org.