YULEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that he's giving over $3 million to the Florida State College at Jacksonville as part of The Florida Job Growth Grant Fund.
The governor was joined by Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Kevin Thibault and Department of Economic Opportunity Secretary Dane Eagle at Florida State College at Jacksonville to make the announcement.
The Florida Job Growth Grant Fund is an economic development program designed to promote public infrastructure and workforce training across the state.
"We're excited about what this is gonna do, right now this is really unique for Nassau County to have something like this..." said Desantis. "...We will be doing more stuff on career education and vocational programs, because when you get people that have these skills, and you get the credentials in these fields, man, you have a lot of opportunities to do very, very well."
FSCJ says the Florida Job Growth Grant is helping Northeast Florida meet the need for skilled manufacturing and logistics workers
This award will allow FSCJ to purchase new training trucks and construct two commercial vehicle driving pads for the Transportation Education Institute. Through this program, students can obtain Commercial Driver’s License Class B and Class C credentials.
In turn, individuals will be equipped to enter the workforce in the high-wage transportation, logistics, and supply chain industry in Northeast Florida. The program will be able to provide required driving classes and endorsements for an estimated 1,240 individuals to obtain high-demand jobs in the transportation industry.
The governor's remarks come one day after he announced legislation called the Stop WOKE Act, which would prevent businesses from conducting trainings on critical race theory and add penalties for schools teaching the curriculum that examines how laws and institutional systems uphold and perpetuate inequality for traditionally marginalized groups.
"I view the wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism," DeSantis said at a news conference in Wildwood. "They want to delegitimize the founding of the country and the institutions, and they basically want to replace it with a very militant form of leftism that would absolutely destroy this country."