Florida School Boards Association
Floridians support allowing trained staff to carry guns at public schools, according to a new USF-Nielsen Sunshine State Survey released on Tuesday. Fifty-six percent “strongly favor” or “favor” having armed guards in schools, while 50 percent “strongly oppose” or “oppose” it, according to the poll. Read full article
Newly released national high school graduation rates show improvement across the board, including in Florida. But Florida continues to sit near the bottom of the pack, despite its growth. The 2014-15 data, distributed by the White House on Monday in advance of an education speech by President Barack Obama, shows Florida had a 77.9 percent…
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is officially calling for a ban on new charter schools. During its national meeting in Cincinnati Saturday, the NAACP’s national board ratified a proposal which was put forward by its members this summer. Members cited concerns over discipline and segregation within charter schools, among many other…
They’re in demand among parents who say traditional public schools have failed — but they’re not always successful. Their intense rate of growth has fueled an equally intense debate about the role they’ll play in the future of U.S. education. Advocates see their expansion as evidence that parents have a huge appetite for school choice.…
FSBA #FridayFive – 5 Things You Should Know Each week, Executive Director, Andrea Messina, picks five of the top education news pieces to share with members. Read. Learn. Share. Retweet. New report out on nation’s Hispanic student demographics Class size amendment may be topic of conversation, again Researchers Studying Ways To Predict School Violence…
State analysts agreed Thursday to lower the expected rate of return on Florida’s $144 billion pension fund, while warning that it may be the first in a series of annual downward adjustments. The shift from a 7.65 percent rate of return to 7.6 percent may seem slight, but it has implications for the $82 billion…
Even in the internet age, the lowly telephone remains an indispensable tool in the day-to-day operations of nearly every school. But thanks to the double whammy of declining state aid and disappearing federal subsidies for such “legacy” technology services, districts nationwide are scrambling to fill a roughly $359 million hole in their collective budgets, according…
Miami Beach city leaders have turned to Florida’s superintendents for help in trying to close loopholes in the state’s class size reduction rules. The City Commission recently sent district leaders a copy of its September resolution that asks lawmakers to reverse the “weakening” of the 2002 constitutional amendment that occurred. Those include examples such as a…
As the waters from Hurricane Matthew began to recede, coastal residents from Florida to the Carolinas may have something else to worry about: Zika. The high winds broke through screen doors and windows, knocked out power and left behind small and large bodies of standing water that could serve as new breeding grounds for mosquitoes.…
As expected, state insurance regulators have issued a final order jacking up the price of worker’s compensation insurance by nearly 15 percent. The order was published Thursday. The decision approves the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) request “for an overall combined statewide average rate increase of 14.5 percent,” the Office of Insurance Regulation said in a…