Florida Moves to Replace ‘Gulf of Mexico’ With ‘Gulf of America’ in Schools

Florida lawmakers passed a bill requiring schools and libraries to adopt the federal renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” a change made under President Trump’s Executive Order 14172, titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.” It now awaits the signature of Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Proposed legislation moving through the Florida legislature, CS/HB 549, requires state agencies to update geographic materials to reflect the new federal designation of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The bill requires instructional materials and library media center collections adopted or acquired after a specified date to “reflect new federal designation of “‘Gulf of Mexico’” as “‘Gulf of America.’” 

The new designation of the Gulf has sparked quite the controversy across media and tourism platforms globally. Some news outlets are willingly making the change while others have been reluctant to address the body of water as the Gulf of America.

Florida House of Representatives, Juan Porras of Miami Dade, filed the bill on Feb. 11. It has since been referred to two committees, the Education and Employment Committee and State Affairs Committee. It was voted favorable on March 13 by the Education and Employment Committee and on March 20 by the State Affairs Committee. 

In a 16-2 vote,  Education and Employment Committee member, Representative Rita Harris voted against the bill.

“As soon as I saw the bill, I skimmed it and I was like, I am definitely voting no on this, there is just no way I'm going to support this bill. We have real problems in this state and this is really taking away from them,” said Harris, (D-Orlando).

Some concerns were brought up during the committee regarding the timeline in which schools would have to replace its geographic material. 

“Even if passed and signed into law in July, there’s just no way the schools can order the books and have all of them changed to Gulf of America in time for the next school year, it just wouldn't happen that way,” Harris said. 

Due to this concern the bill sponsor, Juan Porrass, filed an amendment in hopes of combatting that issue, according to Harris. 

Additionally, Harris had questions about the extent to which this bill will be executed. “We have concerns about classics in the library. Will libraries be required to remove books that make reference to the Gulf of Mexico and have them reprinted to say the Gulf of America? These are the things that, you know, when we were discussing the bill those were some of the concerns I had.” 

Peyton Stromick, a second-grade grade teacher at Addison Mizner K-8 School in Boca Raton worries about schools losing educational resources because the terminology would be deemed as outdated.

“I would hope we can replace similar materials with the updated terminology and I could see teachers possibly ‘updating’ it themselves on certain learning tools in order to still be able to use them,” Stromick said in an email. 

“ I think it is important to keep educational materials up to date with any current changes in the world to avoid confusion among students and their learning, but it could be challenging when it affects the materials that we can use in the classroom,” said Stromick.

Stromick isn't concerned about having to change curriculum or class content to align with this bill.

“In my 2nd grade class, we don’t use a textbook to learn about geography the same way I remember doing in middle school/high school. I make a lot of materials myself and we do a lot of activities where I model first, and students learn “with” each other or as a whole group.”

Additional questions arise about how young school kids will understand the change. Stromick says that, if asked, “I would tell them that like many things in life, they change or grow over time which is what makes history so meaningful, and that it was once called the Gulf of Mexico, but was changed in 2025 to the Gulf of America. I would give them a comparison to how some land could have been owned by other places before it became part of somewhere else’s ‘territory’. Keeping it simple is absolutely key with young kids, as well as providing concepts that they can put into perspective. At their age, I wouldn’t load too much on them about it.”

“It could be confusing for older students maybe, but I don’t think it will have a large effect- when students are young they are eager to learn and they don’t often question too deeply about things like that.”