Ahead of the commission's Tuesday vote to discontinue the public health practice in Miami-Dade, New Times learned that Gonzalez visited an eighth-grade law studies class at a west Miami-Dade magnet public school in his district on March 14 to discuss his and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo's efforts to end community water fluoridation — and to invite the students to attend the commission meeting on April 1.
The commissioner provided the students from Miami Arts Studio 6-12 @ Zelda Glazer (MAS) with a copy of his anti-fluoride resolution and a link to the March 11 meeting of the commission's Safety and Health Committee, during which Ladapo spoke about why Miami-Dade should stop fluoridating its municipal water supply.
The teacher's union, United Teachers of Dade, was not aware of the commissioner's visit
On Tuesday, April 1, the commission will vote on Gonzalez's proposed resolution. The resolution directs the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department to discontinue adding fluoride to the county's water supply within 30 days and instructs Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to create a countywide campaign that addresses dental hygiene and dental health products that contain fluoride.
Following the commissioner's visit to MAS, the students were given a series of questions to answer about fluoridation and directed to write a one-minute speech about the pros or cons of water fluoridation based on a provided slideshow. According to a Miami-Dade Public Schools parent permission form, the class of 30 students will go on a field trip to Tuesday's county commission meeting.
Though the "purpose of the trip" section of the permission slip was blank, New Times learned that a group of students will be chosen to present their thoughts about fluoride at the meeting. It's unclear who is paying for the field trip.
Logistics aside, the students did not receive an objective presentation about the naturally occurring mineral. Instead, University of Florida professor Dr. Ashley Malin, Ladapo's right-hand woman in his campaign to convince local governments across the Sunshine State to discontinue adding fluoride to their public water supplies, created the slideshow, which is based on an assortment of anti-fluoride primary sources.
"Review the attached and answer questions below on a sheet of paper," the instructions read. "Make sure to put information from the presentation to support your answer. Below are the questions and guided discussions to help support your answer."
The assignment questions include "What is fluoride?" and "What are the common fluoridation chemicals added to drinking water?" and "How does prenatal fluoride exposure impact neurobehavioral outcomes in children?
A screenshot of the fluoride assignment
Screenshot obtained by New Times
The presentation contains only one mention of fluoride's role in dental hygiene — that it is "beneficial for cavity prevention." It does not dive into the decades of research about how fluoride, particularly water fluoridation, is associated with a decline in dental cavity rates and improvements in oral health nationwide, nor how some local governments that stopped fluoridating their water supplies reinstituted the practice after dental cavities in the community spiked.
Hours after this story was published, Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokesperson Elmo Lugo responded to New Times' request for comment that the Miami Arts Studio principal and the law studies teacher denied assigning the students a graded assignment about fluoride. Per Lugo, they maintained that the assignment was about "voter safety," contrary to the assignment materials obtained by New Times. They did not provide documentation to explain the apparent discrepancy.
Gonzalez did not respond to a New Times request for comment.
Three days before the commissioner's school visit, Malin had given the identical presentation to the Safety and Health Committee alongside Ladapo and two anti-fluoride dentists at Gonzalez's invitation. No fluoridation advocates or experts were invited to speak at the meeting.
Commissioner Marleine Bastien noted the inherent bias, saying, "My concerns are that you are presenting one side, and what I would have liked is to have another group presenting another side for folks to make an informed decision because overwhelmingly, the research that my staff [found] shows that a low level of fluoride in our water is not bad, is not bad for our health."
At the same meeting, a group of elementary-school-age children, all of whom appeared to be under ten years old, read speeches about why the county should end community fluoridation. Some children needed a parent to coach them through scripts that cited research from the New Jersey Department of Health, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) information, and federal court rulings. It was surprising to see these children rattling off statistics and research studies, considering some of them had trouble pronouncing words like medication and fluoride.
