Florida School Boards Association
Florida ranked 29th and earned a grade of C on an annual report on education quality in the United States released today. The report ranked and graded all 50 states. The Sunshine State’s showing was slightly better this year than last — when it was ranked as 30th in the nation– but put it about where its…
The seven-person Florida Board of Education heads toward its Jan. 17 meeting with two open seats and no announced time line from the Governor’s Office to fill them. Board member John Padget, a Keys businessman and onetime Monroe superintendent, was forced to step down in December after having served two full terms. He cannot be…
Senators next week will hear a bill allowing guns in classrooms, airports and government meetings. Gun advocates in Florida didn’t take a break over the holiday weekend. Florida Open Carry Inc. began rallying its troops New Year’s Eve with a mass email in support of “the most important pro-Second Amendment rights bill of the 2017 legislative…
Influential state Sen. David Simmons is wasting no time in his effort to improve Florida’s public school testing model. Simmons has dedicated his PreK-12 Appropriation Subcommittee’s entire second session to a discussion on assessments, and how to streamline the time and money spent on them. Read More
Charter schools. Vouchers. Tax-credit scholarships. Education savings accounts. What are these things and how do they relate to school choice? Education Week reporter Arianna Prothero breaks down the different forms of public and private school choice. Read More
Senator David Simmons says teachers shouldn’t have to hold down second jobs: “It breaks my heart when I see teachers having to work in the evening just to make ends meet and we’ve got to improve teacher compensation,” he says. Simmons, an Altamont Springs Republican, is chairing his chamber’s K-12 Education Committee. And he says…
The United States Department of Education regulations for accountability, state plans and data reporting were released November 29, 2016, effective January 30, 2017. Of note, the state plan due dates are pushed back to either April 3 or September 18, 2017. The timeline for school improvement decisions based on the accountability system is moved back…
State lawmakers will need to decide whether to hold property taxes flat or have the option of providing a significant funding increase to public schools, the chairman of the Senate budget-writing committee said Thursday. The remarks added new urgency to an emerging debate over what to do about a decision by the Legislature early this…
Most local school districts kept their classes small enough this fall to meet Florida’s class-size rules, according to recently released data from the Florida Department of Education. Read full article
As Florida prepares for the arrival of medical marijuana, the Miami-Dade School Board is urging lawmakers to keep cannabis away from school children — unless they have a prescription. At a meeting on Wednesday, the board voted unanimously to call on the Florida Legislature to ban medical marijuana dispensaries within 2,500 feet of schools if they…