Mark Woods: In Florida, back to school is Shakespearean. Part comedy, part tragedy.

To be or not to be, that is but one of the latest questions in Florida.

Can a school teach the 16th-century works of Shakespeare without running afoul of laws passed by 21st-century Florida politicians?

How about an Advanced Placement Psychology course that has been taught in Florida since 1993?

And speaking of bills in Florida, what if a student's legal name is William? Without a signed form from a parent, can a teacher call him Bill?

It’s back to school and I do not envy teachers, superintendents, principals, librarians, counselors, parents, students or pretty much anyone else trying to navigate the murky, punitive waters of public education in modern-day Florida.

You may recall that near the end of the last season of the reality show that is education in Florida, a principal in Tallahassee was asked to resign after a lesson in a sixth-grade art history class included — cover thine eyes — Michelangelo’s “David” statue.

Three parents complained that they weren’t notified about this in advance. One equated the nude statue to pornography.

So in the Age of Parental Rights, the principal was gone, pushed out by the school board chair (but invited by Florence to come see the statue in person).

That tumultuous school year, full of political grandstanding and seemingly non-stop controversies, finally ended and summer began. Remember when summer was a slow time for schools? Not in Florida. Not this summer.

We had superintendent searches going on all over the state, including in Duval County. We had battles over Black history. We had challenges to hundreds more books, including perhaps most ironically one called “120 Banned Books” in Clay County.

And just before teachers returned to their classrooms, we had questions about Shakespeare.

All the world's a Florida stage

Hillsborough County officials said they would be teaching only parts of Shakespeare's works, not the entire plays. One reason: to spend more time preparing for a new set of state exams. Another: fear of violating the Parental Rights in Education Act, the one dubbed “don’t say gay” by critics. First passed last year, it was expanded this year.

Shakespeare can be racy. It’s full of innuendo and adult situations. A play like “Romeo and Juliet” implies that the teen lovers have had sex. Books have been challenged for less. So district leaders worried about repercussions if they taught it in its entirety.

Joseph Cool, a reading teacher at Gaither High School, told the Tampa Bay Times that he understands why district officials made their decision, but added that comes with a cost. It diminishes what students are learning in the classroom. And beyond the classroom …

“I think the rest of the nation — no, the world, is laughing at us,” he said.

He’s right about that.

We aren’t just a punchline. We’re a familiar joke set up by a familiar sequence of events, inevitably leading to where this one did.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Florida saying friends, Romans, countrymen, we never intended for this to happen.

Florida insists it doesn’t have a problem with teaching Shakespeare, although I’m guessing teachers still might want to avoid getting too far into how all the female roles were played by young men, leading some to describe them as Elizabethan drag queens.

The Florida Department of Education issued statements saying that it does not believe that Shakespeare should be removed from Florida classrooms. As if to emphasize this point, education commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. included “Romeo and Juliet” on his August books of the month list.

And so it goes.

State leaders talk about how they’re going to stop woke, punishing those who get in their way. Lawmakers pass a vague bill. The governor signs it. The affected people try to avoid running afoul of the new law and the leaders. One of these attempts makes national news, embarrassing state leaders. The state leaders say it’s an overreaction; they never intended for the law and their threats to lead to this.

And this keeps happening, almost as if what's past is prologue.

Though this be madness, there is method in it

It’s like when books end up being kept out of classrooms while school districts review them to make sure they don’t have what the state would consider traces of CRT. Because, as state leaders have said often, critical race theory can sneak its way into a lot of things, even math books. And that’s going to stop. We’re going to deputize parents, passing a law that opens the way to sue schools AND collect attorney fees. And if you don’t think we mean business, just look at what happened to Disney.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Not a book about Roberto Clemente on the shelves of Duval County until after that made national headlines? Not a reference to race in a textbook entry about Rosa Parks? Florida leaders never meant for that to happen. How did anyone get that idea?

Perhaps the best example of a state of confusion in the state of Florida came just days before the start of this school year.

Districts prepared for what they perceived to be a no-win situation: If they taught all of the content in AP Psychology, including parts involving sexual orientation and gender identity, would their teachers be risking breaking Florida law? If they didn’t teach all of the content in AP Pysch as it has been taught for 30 years, did their students risk not getting AP credits for college?

As some districts began dropping the class and making alternative plans, the education commissioner wrote a couple of letters to districts, ultimately stating that the Department of Education believes AP Psychology “can be taught consistent with Florida law.”

So in the same year that the state expanded laws banning lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity — a law with potentially serious repercussions for teachers who violate it — Florida said teachers should go ahead and teach this course. No pressure.

Quite a few school districts decided to just go ahead with alternative plans.

They’ll still have plenty of other things to worry about — like whether they’re violating new state law by using a student’s nickname.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Ron. Wait, doesn't your birth certificate say Ronald?

By any other name

Thanks to a law signed by a governor whose legal name is Ronald, students now need parental permission to use a nickname in school.

According to the Department of Education, this will “strengthen the rights of parents and safeguard their child’s educational record to ensure the use of a child’s legal name in school or a parent-approved nickname.”

It’s another broad law — with an intended target of gender identity, pronouns, the idea of Robert asking to be called Roberta — that has led to school districts trying to figure out how to adhere to it. Which has led to the kind of stories that keep Florida education in the national headlines. If Robert wants to be called Rob, he’ll need proof of parental permission.

Orange and Seminole counties are using what they call the “Parental Authorization for Deviation from Student’s Legal Name Form.” It doesn't neatly spell anything quite like what state leaders came up with when writing the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (WOKE) Act. But it is another result of it.

Welcome back to school.

Some states are asking why Johnny can’t read.

Florida is asking Jonathan if he has a signed parental consent form.

mwoods@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4212

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: As school year begins in Florida, Shakespearean level drama plays out