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…
One of our sharp-eyed readers noticed an error in our quick comparison of the FEFP funding amounts in the House and Senate education budget proposals. We’ve corrected the mistake and posted the revised side-by-side on our 2017 Legislative Session page under the “2017-2018 Education Budget Materials” tab – please click HERE for a direct link…
Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran famously said “hell, no” last month to any property tax increases during the 2017 legislative session. That’s not scaring off the state Senate, though. Senators plan to test Corcoran’s hardline stance and are proposing to spend almost $540 million more than the House next year on K-12 public education by…