State law requires the governor to release his/her state budget recommendations at least 30 days before the opening of the legislative session. Governor DeSantis unveiled his state budget recommendation on Monday with time to spare. It is important to keep in mind that the governor’s budget recommendation is exactly that: a recommendation. It is the…
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday proposed a record $91.4 billion state budget for the next fiscal year, including spending an additional $1 billion on teacher raises. The proposed budget is more than $400 million higher than the current year and includes plans to spend millions to protect the state’s elections systems and hire hundreds of new…
The Legislature held a 5th week of Interim Committee Meetings this week. Several bills and topics of interest were considered, including funding, health and safety, public records, and ethics. The outcome of the legislative meetings of interest is provided in the first file below. In addition, updates on several federal issues are provided in the…
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday proposed a nearly $1 billion teacher pay package, including a newly revamped teacher bonus program of $300 million that would be on top of some $600 million to boost minimum salaries for teachers. Read More
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday a plan to replace the Best and Brightest bonus program to reward teachers and principals with tier-based systems. DeSantis, joined by Department of Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran in Vero Beach, called for $300 million in teacher and principal bonuses in the Florida Classroom Teacher and Florida School Principal Bonus programs. Read More
From Play-doh to Plato: All students need to grapple with grade-level text Community Connectors program encourages community organizations to partner to provide mentoring services to young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds Concrete ways to help students self-regulate and prioritize work Even parents are now seeing the importance of equity in parent associations Strong leadership…
The United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) issued a report analyzing targeted school violence. This report expands upon twenty years of NTAC research in threat assessment and violence prevention. In line with this effort, NTAC conducted a study of 41 incidents of targeted school violence from 2008 to 2017. Read More Read the Report
Aiming to align career education to the needs of employers, state Sen. Travis Hutson proposed legislation to direct job growth grant fund money to certain charter schools that specialized in career-technical graduation pathways. His bill (SB 130) quickly attracted criticism from observers who wanted to know why only charter schools would benefit from the plan. Read More
Florida is one of only two states that hasn’t changed its sales tax laws since consumers began fleeing to the world wide web for gifts, groceries and other everyday needs. But that could change next year. A pair of bills have been filed for the 2020 Legislative Session that would require online retailers to collect and remit…
One state lawmaker wants to double the length of Florida’s annual back-to-school tax holiday to 10 days in 2020. Gainesville Republican Sen. Keith Perry’s proposed holiday (SB 542) would run from Friday, July 31 through Sunday, Aug. 9 next year before the earliest classes begin on Aug. 10. Read More