Port St. Joe – Billy Quinn, Danny Little and Cindy Belin of the Gulf County School Board joined over 130 school board members, district superintendents, and other education leaders in Tallahassee March 29-31 to participate in the Florida School Boards Association’s 30th Annual Day in the Legislature Conference and Board of Directors’ Meeting. Read More
The Senate and House Appropriations Committees reviewed and amended their respective proposed state budgets today. In the Senate Appropriations Committee meeting, there were more than 120 amendments filed with about 30 of these proposed amendments relating to education. The majority of the education related amendments revised non-FEFP allocations and the remaining few focused on post-secondary…
A sweeping plan to reduce standardized testing in Florida’s K-12 schools cleared its first state Senate committee on Monday, after lawmakers struck a compromise to blend competing reform proposals. Despite political drama last week that delayed the policy discussion, senators breezed through vetting SB 926 and passed it unanimously after considering most of the amendments…
On Wednesday, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will meet to review and revise their respective budgets. To set the stage for this, we have prepared a Side-by-Side Comparison of current year (2016-2017) education funding with the funding in the proposed 2017-2018 House and Senate budgets (our Comparison is also posted with other 2017-2018 Education…
As outlined in yesterday’s Session Spotlight, the House and Senate took up several bills of interest today. Perhaps most notable of these was the consideration of SB 926 relating to K-12 Student Assessments and sponsored by Senator Flores. The bill was taken up today for its first formal review by the Senate Education Committee. During…
The House and Senate released their respective proposed state budgets (aka General Appropriations Act or GAA) at the end of last week, with the overall House Budget totaling more than $81.2 billion while the Senate Budget totals nearly $83.2 billion. While it is normal for the two budget proposals to differ, this $2 billion gap…
Fed up with traditional K-12 public schools that perpetually fail, often in Florida’s poorest communities, Republican lawmakers in the state House have proposed a bold — and costly — idea to help those students. They want to spend $200 million in 2017-18 to entice “the best of the best charter schools in the entire country”…
House leaders have revealed detailed plans for boosting charter schools after pledging for weeks to invest heavily in alternatives to traditional public education. House education committees this week approved three proposed committee bills that would ease the proliferation of charter schools, including giving them access to significantly more public money. Read More
The House and Senate are on track to start budget negotiations with a gap of $2 billion in their proposals, providing fresh reasons for skepticism that lawmakers will complete a spending plan by the scheduled May 5 end of the legislative session. The Senate on Thursday published an initial draft of its budget that would…