Florida students will soon receive classroom instruction on the atrocities and expanding threat of communism under legislation signed Wednesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The requirement covers every grade from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Senate Bill 1264 directs public schools to provide age appropriate lessons about communist regimes, their victims, and the dangers posed by the ideology.

The curriculum is expected to present historical facts that too often receive a convenient gloss from the academic left.

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DeSantis signed the measure in Hialeah on the 63rd anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

That timing carried particular weight in South Florida, where many families have direct experience with communist oppression in Cuba and elsewhere.

“We might as well give them the truth when they are in our schools because a lot of these universities… teach how great communism is,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Hialeah.

“We are setting the proper foundation.”

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The governor argued that students deserve an honest account before reaching universities where radical professors may portray communism as a noble experiment that simply went wrong.

Florida is choosing facts over fashionable excuses for failed regimes.

The new law requires lessons to highlight communist atrocities and the ideology’s “increasing threat.”

Those subjects include the brutality, political repression, economic ruin, and loss of individual liberty associated with communist governments around the world.

Florida Education Secretary Manny Diaz said the curriculum would help students recognize the lessons of history rather than stumble blindly into the same destructive ideas.

Supporters contend that young Americans should understand what happens when government power swallows personal freedom.

“This bill today gives us the opportunity to ensure that we learn history so that our students in Florida are not apt to repeat the history and really understand the evils of communism,” Diaz said.

The legislation also clears a path for the creation of a communism history museum in Florida.

Such an institution could preserve testimony from victims and provide future generations with evidence that cannot be waved away by ideological revisionists.

Another provision establishes a partnership between Miami Dade College and Florida International University.

The collaboration, called the Institute for Freedom in the Americas, will promote individual liberty and economic freedom throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

That mission reflects Florida’s close ties to communities shaped by upheaval in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and other nations touched by authoritarian socialism.

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For many residents, communism is not an abstract classroom debate or a slogan printed on a trendy shirt.

Two dozen Democratic lawmakers voted against the proposal in March, including Orlando Rep. Anna Eskamani.

Democrats argued that the curriculum places too much attention on victims of communism while failing to emphasize harms connected to American foreign policy.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to just focus on one specific victim of a political entity while ignoring victims that unfortunately have been created at the arms of the United States, whether its our foreign policy decisions and so forth,” Eskamani said.

Eskamani also accused Republicans of hypocrisy for opposing ideological indoctrination while requiring instruction about communism.

That criticism ignores the rather obvious distinction between teaching documented history and pushing political propaganda as unquestionable truth.

“I do find it disingenuous that Republican colleagues who are constantly screaming about indoctrination… then sponsor legislation that emphasizes that a specific political viewpoint be taught to our students,” Eskamani said.

Supporters see no contradiction in warning students about an ideology responsible for repression, starvation, imprisonment, and mass death.

Teaching those realities is no more partisan than teaching the crimes of any other authoritarian system, despite the left’s predictable discomfort.

The law takes effect July 1, while the required classroom instruction is scheduled to begin in 2026.

State education officials will now be responsible for developing standards that satisfy the law while remaining suitable for students at different ages.

With the measure, Florida is making clear that communist history will not be reduced to vague theories or sanitized promises of equality.

Students will instead encounter the record left behind when centralized power crushes liberty and citizens lose the right to resist.

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