FSBA Session Spotlight — January 31, 2017

Work on the state budget took center stage today and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees reviewed their respective budget proposals and related bills. The House made only a few changes to their main budget bill – none of which impacted Pre-K-12 Education Funding – but adopted a lengthy substitute bill for their main education Conforming Bill that added several new provisions — some of which are controversial — to the original bill.  Meanwhile, the Senate adopted dozens of budget amendments, some of which impact Non-FEFP education funding.  Please click on the link below for our report on these revisions to the budgets and related bills.  The next step in the budget development process will be consideration of these bills on the floor or each chamber.  Tomorrow, a few bills of interest will be considered in various legislative committees and several of the CRC Committees will meet to consider proposals to amend the Florida Constitution.  Please click on the link below for more information on the bills and proposals that will be considered tomorrow.

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In the House Appropriations Committee meeting:

APC1 – 2018-2019 General Appropriations Act – AMENDED; SUBMITTED AS A COMMITTEE BILL
[NOTE: The Committee approved some amendments to this Proposed Committee Bill, but none of them impacted PreK-12 funding.  Please see our Side-by-Side Comparison of House and Senate PreK-12 Education Appropriations for more information.]

APC 2 – Implementing the 2018-2019 General Appropriations Act — SUBMITTED AS A COMMITTEE BILL
The bill provides the statutory authority necessary to implement and execute the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for Fiscal Year 2018-2019. The statutory changes are effective for only one year and either expire on July 1, 2019 or revert to the language as it existed before the changes made by the bill. With regard to provisions relating to PreK-12 Education funding, the bill:

• Incorporates the Florida Education Finance Program work papers by reference for the purpose of displaying the calculations used by the Legislature.
• Provides that funds provided for instructional materials shall be released and expended as required in the proviso language in the General Appropriations Act.

APC 4 – State Administered Retirement Systems — SUBMITTED AS A COMMITTEE BILL
The bill establishes the employer contribution rates for the normal costs and the unfunded actuarial liability (UAL) of the FRS, as determined by the July 1, 2017 Annual Valuation, necessary to adequately fund the program. The normal and UAL rates were ‘blended’ with the investment plan allocations and salaries to establish employer contribution rates. The application of the rates recommended in the 2017 Actuarial Valuation of the FRS, will have a significant negative fiscal impact to the state and local governments: $86.2 million in General Revenue (state, district school boards, state colleges and universities) and $13.5 million in trust funds; and $66.6 million to local governments.

HB 7055 – Education by Education – AMENDED; PASSED WITH A COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE (CS)
The bill:

• Establishes the Hope Scholarship Program for students subjected to certain misconduct in public schools.
• Establishes Reading Education Scholarship Accounts for struggling readers in grades 3-5.
• Streamlines and strengthens monitoring and oversight provisions for private school scholarship programs.
• Expands allowable expenditures of scholarship funds in the Gardiner Scholarship Program.
• Requires the Florida Department of Education (DOE) to develop templates to help teachers develop curricula.
• Requires paper-based statewide, standardized English language arts and math assessments for grades 7-8.
• Requires integration of social studies content into reading and writing prompts on state assessments.
• Requires released assessment items to be in an electronic format that facilitates sharing of assessment items.
• Provides Florida Virtual School (FLVS) students with access to district testing facilities for certain assessments.
• Allows charter schools to provide educational leadership preparation programs.
• Allows charter schools to delay opening up to 3 years.
• Provides charter schools with access to surplus property on the same basis as public schools.
• Clarifies requirement for distributing discretionary capital outlay millage revenues with charter schools.
• Requires school districts to provide background screening results for charter school employees within 14 days.
• Revises eligibility requirements for high performing charter schools and allows replication of up to two schools.
• Clarifies provisions relating to charter school terminations and consolidations.
• Expands the Principal Autonomy Pilot Program Initiative to a statewide program.
• Allows certain principals to manage multiple district schools that operate under an independent governing board.
• Expands a superintendent’s duties to recommend to approve schools to operate under such a governing board, subject to school board approval.
• Revises requirements related to home school and private school dual enrollment costs.
• Establishes and enhances school district ethical and financial accountability and transparency requirements.
• Requires school boards to provide financial efficiency data and fiscal trend information.
• Requires DOE to provide a web-based tool to identify high-performing, efficient schools and school districts.
• Establishes anti-nepotism provisions for district school superintendents.
• Revises requirements for the distribution of Title I funds.
• Requires DOE to conduct outreach on apprenticeship programs to include military veterans.
• Exempts military personnel, veterans, and spouses from initial educator certification application and exam fees.
• Allows JROTC instructors to participate in the Teachers Classroom Supply Assistance Program.
• Provides FLVS enrollment priority for children of Florida resident military personnel who are stationed out of state.
• Designates March 25 as “Medal of Honor Day”.
• Provides that certain instruction on Medal of Honor recipients satisfies specified instructional requirements.
• Requires employee organizations that represent instructional personnel to recertify in certain circumstances.
• In addition, the bill appropriates for the 2018-2019 fiscal year the sum of $19,350,000 and the sum of $850,000 to implement the provisions of this act.

The bill conforms to appropriations provided in House budget (above) as the funding for the Florida Education Finance Program is contingent upon its passage. [NOTE: The Committee took up and passed a Proposed Committee Substitute (PCS) that doubled the length of the bill. The amended bill retains the provisions of the original bill and adds all or part of the text of some stand-alone bills – most notably, HB 1 relating to the Hope Scholarship Program, HB 1279 relating to school district accountability, and HB 25 relating to labor organizations  — as well as provisions relating to Title I funding and State Requirements for Educational Facilities (SREF). We are developing a detailed summary of this 200-page bill as amended but, in the meantime, the list of provisions above captures the main points.  It is also important to note that the House budget specifies that the provision of FEFP funding is contingent upon this bill becoming law.]

The Senate Appropriations Committee will meet, 1:00 – 6:00 pm, to consider the following budget related bills and others:

SB 2500 – 2018-2019 General Appropriations Act – SUBMITTED AS A COMMITTEE BILL
[NOTE: The Committee approved dozens of amendments to this Proposed Committee Bill, some of which impacted non-FEFP funding – enhancing funding for some Early Learning programs and generally shifting funds among Teacher Professional Development (Line Item 107), Strategic Statewide Initiatives (Line Item 108), and School and Instructional Enhancements (Line Item 111) — but made no changes to FEFP funding.  We will update our Side-by-Side Comparison of House and Senate PreK-12 Education Appropriations to reflect these changes.]

SB 2502 – Implementing the 2018-2019 General Appropriations Act – SUBMITTED AS A COMMITTEE BILL
The bill provides the statutory authority necessary to implement and execute the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for Fiscal Year 2018-2019. The statutory changes are effective for only one year and either expire on July 1, 2019 or revert to the language as it existed before the changes made by the bill. With regard to provisions relating to PreK-12 Education funding, the bill:

• Incorporates the Florida Education Finance Program work papers by reference for the purpose of displaying the calculations used by the Legislature.
• Provides that funds provided for instructional materials shall be released and expended as required in the proviso language in the General Appropriations Act.
• Creates two new funding categoricals within the FEFP:
  • The mental health assistance allocation provides funds for school districts and charter schools to help address the mental health crisis affecting children and young people in Florida, including the opioid crisis, bullying, and youth suicides. Schools may use these funds primarily to help identify and refer students for necessary services and to create additional partnerships among service providers and the schools.
  • The funding compression allocation provides additional funding for school districts whose total funds per FTE in the prior year were less than the statewide average.

SB 7014 – State Administered Retirement Systems — PASSED
The bill establishes the contribution rates paid by employers participating in the Florida Retirement System (FRS) beginning July 1, 2018. These rates are intended to fund the full normal cost and the amortization of the unfunded actuarial liability of the FRS. With these modifications to employer contribution rates, the FRS Trust Fund will receive roughly $178.5 million more in revenue on an annual basis beginning July 1, 2018. The public employers that will incur these additional costs are state agencies, state universities and colleges, school districts, counties, and certain municipalities and other governmental entities.

SB 2508 – PreK-12 Education – AMENDED; SUBMITTED AS A COMMITTEE BILL
The bill conforms education statutes to the funding policies implemented in SPB 2500, the General Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2018-2019. The bill modifies Florida education law related to mental health services in schools, school improvement and education accountability, persistently low-performing schools, schools of hope, school funding, and the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. Specifically, the bill:

• Creates the mental health assistance allocation within the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) to provide funds for school-based mental health programs and establishes related requirements.
• Establishes the hope supplemental services allocation within the FEFP to provide schools implementing a district-managed turnaround plan or a turnaround option specified in law with funds to offer services designed to improve the overall academic and community welfare of the schools’ students and their families.
• Authorizes a district to use certain sources of funds for educational, auxiliary, and ancillary plant capital outlay purposes without first needing a survey recommendation.
• Modifies the calculation methodology for specified charter school capital outlay provisions and revises the amount of discretionary millage that a school district may expend for specified purposes.
• Revises the Best and Brightest Teacher Scholarship Program by removing the current provisions for awarding these bonuses and redirecting $184 million, which would have funded these bonuses, to the FEFP for salary increases for highly effective and effective teachers.
• Strengthens school improvement and accountability measures by:
  • Providing that a school must complete two years of a district-managed turnaround plan before the school is designated as persistently low-performing and required to implement a turnaround option.
  • Expanding the turnaround options available to a school district for a persistently low-performing school to include a franchise model school that is led by a specified highly effective principal and incentivize a hope operator to establish a school of hope at the district-owned facilities of the persistently low-performing school.
  • Extending the funds available in the School of Hope Program to all eligible schools implementing a district-managed turnaround plan or a turnaround option.
• Revises school of hope provisions to require a hope operator to submit a notice of intent containing an operations plan specifying the hope operator’s intent to undertake the operations of the persistently low-performing schools.
• Renames the Collegiate High School Program as the Structured High School Acceleration Program and creates a bonus funding mechanism to incentivize school district and college interest in expanding programs.

The bill creates three new funding categoricals within the FEFP, for which SPB 2500 appropriates $184.8 million. SPB 2500 appropriates $40 million for the mental health assistance allocation, $88,049,710 for the hope supplemental services allocation, and $56,783,293 for the funding compression allocation.  [NOTE: Today’s amendment corrects and clarifies a provision enacted by HB 7069 relating to allowable sources of funds that may be used for certain capital outlay purposes. The short summary above reflects the provisions of the bill as amended. We are developing a more detailed summary of this bill but, in the meantime, the short summary above captures the main provisions.]

In the Senate Session:

SB 192 – Public Meetings by Baxley – READ 3^RD TIME; PASSED THE SENATE
The bill codifies judicial interpretation and application of the following terms:

• “De facto meeting” means the use of board or commission staff or third parties, acting as intermediaries, to facilitate discussion of public business between board or commission members.
• “Discussion” means a conversation between or among board or commission members regardless of whether through oral, written, electronic, or any other form of communication.
• “Meeting” means a gathering, whether formal or informal, of two or more members of the same board or commission, even if they have not yet taken office.
• “Official act” means the adoption of a resolution or rule or other formal action being taken by the board or commission.
• “Public business” means any matter before, or foreseeably expected to come before, the board or commission.

The bill also specifies that members of a board may participate in “fact-finding” exercises or excursion to research public business, and may participate in meetings with a member of the Legislature if:

• The board provides reasonable notice;
• A vote, official act, or an agreement regarding a future action does not occur;
• There is no discussion of “public business” that occurs; and
• There are appropriate records, minutes, audio recordings, or video recordings made and retained as a public record.

In addition, the bill provides that, if there is a gathering of two or more board members where no official acts are taken and no public business is discussed, then no public notice or access is required.  [NOTE: The House companion bill — HB 79 – is similar and has passed two of three committees of reference.]

SB 118 – Visitation of Schools by State Legislators by Hukill – READ 3^RD TIME; PASSED THE SENATE
The bill authorizes an individual member of the State Legislature to visit any district school, including any charter school, in his or her legislative district, on any day and at any time at his or her pleasure. The bill also clarifies that the district school superintendent’s designee or the school principal’s designee, in addition to the specified district employees in current law, may not limit the duration or scope of the visit or direct the visiting individual to leave the school premises. [NOTE: The House companion bill — HB 975 – is identical but has not been heard in either of two committees of reference.]

In the House Session:

HB 317 – Local Tax Referenda by Ingoglia – READ 2^ND TIME; READ 3^RD TIME; PASSED THE HOUSE
The bill requires any referendum to levy a discretionary sales surtax to be held during a general election. Such a referendum will still require approval by a majority of the electors voting on the question. [NOTE: The Senate companion bill — SB 272 – is comparable and has passed two of four committees of reference.]

HB 7045 – Date for Convening the 2020 Legislative Session by Rules & Policy – READ 2^ND TIME; READ 3^RD TIME; PASSED THE HOUSE
The bill requires the 2020 regular session of the Legislature to convene on Tuesday, January 14, 2020. [NOTE: There is not Senate companion bill.]

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Please note that the meeting listed below may be viewed via live webcast on the Florida Channel. For real-time updates, please click HERE to access our Twitter feed.

The CRC Education Committee will meet, 9:00 am – 2:00 pm, to consider the following proposals and others:

Proposal 30 – Basic Rights by Martinez
This proposal revises Article I, Section 2 of the Florida Constitution. The proposal would amend the prohibited bases of government discrimination so that this provision would provide that no person shall be deprived of any right because of race, religion, national origin, or “any” disability (rather than “physical disability”).

Proposal 10 – Civic Literacy by Gaetz
This proposal revises Article IX of the Florida Constitution. The proposal would add a new section that would provide that, as education is essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the legislature shall provide by law for the promotion of civic literacy in order to ensure that students enrolled in public education understand and are prepared to exercise their rights and responsibilities as citizens of a constitutional democracy.

The House Public Integrity & Ethics Committee will meet, 12:00 – 2:00 pm, to consider the following items:
PIE4 – Government Integrity by Public Integrity & Ethics
The bill includes various provisions designed to promote integrity in government and identify and eliminate, fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, and misconduct in government. Specifically, the bill:

• Creates the Florida Accountability Office within the Office of Auditor General for the purpose of ensuring accountability and integrity in state and local government and identifying, investigating, and recommending the elimination of waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, and related misconduct in government.
• Requires the Chief Inspector General and agency inspectors general to make regular reasonable suspicion determinations whenever initiating an investigation of fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, or misconduct in government.
• Provides a mechanism for the state to recover funds when the Chief Inspector General or an agency inspector general determines a public official, independent contractor, or agency has committed fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, or misconduct in government.
• Requires the Chief Financial Officer to regularly forward to the Florida Accountability Office copies of suggestions and information submitted through the state’s ‘Get Lean’ hotline.
• Provides a financial incentive for agency employees to file ‘Whistle-blower’s Act’ complaints and participate in investigations that lead to the recovery of funds.
• Strengthens the state procurement law to provide greater protection to the public in connection with the expenditure of public money.
• Broadens the competitive solicitation exemption for statewide broadcasting of public service announcements, currently benefiting one particularly described statewide non-profit organization.
• Prohibits, with limited exception, a state employee from lobbying for funding for an appropriation and also participating in the negotiating and awarding of any contract in connection with the appropriation.

HB 7007 – Ethics Reform by Public Integrity & Ethics
The bill addresses public officer and employee conduct regarding solicitation and negotiation of conflicting and potentially conflicting income producing relationships, addresses post-service lobbying restrictions for certain officers, and revises executive branch lobbyist registration requirements. Specifically, the bill:

• Prohibits public officers and employees from soliciting an employment or contractual relationship from entities with whom they are prohibited from entering into conflicting employment and contractual relationships;
• Requires public officers and employees to report any offer of an employment or contractual relationship from such entities;
• Requires certain disclosures of prohibited solicitations;
• Imposes a two-year post-service ban on personal representation before any state executive branch agency for agency directors, unless the former director is employed by another state agency;
• Imposes the following restrictions on statewide elected officers and legislators:
  • Prohibits solicitation of employment or investment advice arising out of official duties;
  • Prohibits solicitation and acceptance of investment advice or profitmaking arrangements (other than employment) from lobbyists or lobbyists’ employers or principals; and
  • Requires immediate disclosure of either new employment or an increase in compensation from certain employers;
• Restricts certain unelected state officers and employees regarding soliciting and negotiating an employment or contractual relationship with certain employers;
• Prohibits, with limited exceptions, the use of an elected official’s name, image, or symbols of office in a public service announcement while the official is a candidate for reelection or election to another public office if such announcement is paid for with public funds or donated airtime;
• Authorizes the Commission on Ethics to investigate disclosures of certain prohibited solicitations in the same manner as a complaint;
• Revises executive branch lobbying registration requirements to mandate electronic registration, clarify provisions, adjust the maximum registration fee, and add the Board of Governors of the State University System and the State Board of Education to the list of entities to which the requirements apply; and
• Repeals a statute strictly regulating legislative lobbying by state agency, state university, and community college personnel.

The CRC General Provisions Committee will meet, 1:00 – 4:00 pm, to consider the following items and others:

Proposal 39 – Ethics by Gaetz
The proposal amends Article II, Section 8, Article V, Section 13, and creates a new section in Article XII of the Florida Constitution. The proposal would establish certain restrictions for specified public officers, including school district officials, and employees regarding the personal representation for compensation of another person or entity before certain government bodies and to specify minimum requirements for the Code of Ethics as to the prohibition against abuse of public position.

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