Florida School Boards Association
A question about mental health service referrals on new student registration forms is raising concerns about privacy and worsening the stigma of mental illness. The new question is part of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, passed by the Legislature in the wake of the mass shooting earlier this year. Read More
It’s hard to imagine how toxic Florida’s political landscape might be today, had its legislature and governor been free to act over the past decade without the oversight of the judicial. Certainly Democrats tested their limits back when they were in power. But the GOP has pushed legislative trickery to all new levels. Read More
The Leon County Courthouse was the scene Friday for the first of what looks to be several showdowns over the fate of Amendment 8, a Constitution Revision Commission proposal to change portions of the state constitution’s education article. The proposal aims to do three things — set school board term limits, embed civics education in…
As millions of Florida’s school children returned to classes this week, many schools struggled to find enough teachers greet and teach them. “We are very concerned about the growing teacher shortage,” Cathy Boehme of the Florida Education Association told the state Board of Education on Wednesday. Her review of three years’ worth of statewide teacher job…
Teacher pay and school security topped the list of concerns for Florida Board of Education members Wednesday as they kicked off their annual legislative budget request process. Though they wondered where they might find the money for any added expenses, board members stressed the need to increase teacher salaries to keep them in the schools and…
Retired Florida chief justice Harry Lee Anstead has asked his former panel to require justification for why six proposed constitutional amendments including Amendment 8 should remain on the November ballot, or to toss them out. Anstead, joined by former Florida Elections commissioner Robert Barnas, contend in their filing to the state Supreme Court that the six…
State economists on Monday found millions of extra dollars for the state’s public schools, but also a $29 million shortfall in takings from tobacco taxes and a landmark legal settlement with the tobacco companies. The Revenue Estimating Conference projected that $128.4 million would remain unspent at the end of this fiscal year within the Educational…
It’s not the kind of news you’d want emblazoned on that “Welcome to Florida” sign. Coming in at No. 15, between Tennessee (14) and South Carolina (16), the Sunshine State ranks among the 20 states with the highest rates of underprivileged children, according to a study from personal finance website WalletHub. Mississippi landed at No. 1, with New Jersey…
Students across the country are heading back to school this month, amid a growing crisis to hire and keep qualified teachers. At the start of the last school year, more than 100,000 classrooms were staffed by teachers not fully qualified to teach, equivalent to about one classroom for every public school in the U.S.Nationally, about…
For years, Republican lawmakers in Tallahassee have boasted about Florida’s charms as a low-tax state, and according to a recent report, Sunshine State residents do have the lowest tax burden in the continental United States (trailing only Alaska nationwide.) But with more than 21 million people in the state and hundreds more coming by the day,…