Florida School Boards Association
Florida school district officials are on alert in the days after an interim grand jury report found that some districts in the state’s 67 counties “have failed — or refused — to accept their responsibility for school safety.” The grand jury report is dated Friday, July 19, 2019 and found that “numerous school districts” in the state…
In part to settle a lawsuit contending the state’s Best and Brightest teacher bonus was discriminatory, Florida legislators in the spring changed the eligibility criteria for future awards. Gone was the reliance on SAT and ACT scores. In its place came the use of a school’s improvement in the state accountability points system used to…
Some Florida school districts and law enforcement agencies have not fully complied with security measures enacted after a 2018 high school massacre because they are bickering over who is responsible, an interim report by a statewide grand jury says. Read More Read First Interim Grand Jury Report
At Florida’s State Board of Education meeting this week, board member Michael Olenick talked about the realities of teacher pay in Florida. You can’t use a teacher “bonus” to get a mortgage or an auto loan, he said. You need overall salary increases that boost annual teacher pay. “I’m using the word ‘raise,’ Olenick said. …
Florida education department officials are taking steps to bolster the state-funded Voluntary Prekindergarten (VPK) program and turn it into the “truly really desired option” for early education, just two months after Gov. Ron DeSantis decried low readiness levels of children emerging from the system. Read More
The Florida Board of Education has its first new chairman in four years, with the appointment of Highlands County citrus farmer Andy Tuck. Tuck, appointed to a second term on the board in early 2018, replaces Marva Johnson of Winter Garden, who held the post since 2015 and was barred from continuing as chair. Read…
The field of computer science offers plenty of well-paying jobs, but less than 1 percent of the undergraduates enrolled in Florida’s universities earned degrees in that major last year. State leaders hope a new $10 million investment to train more computer science teachers — the largest in the nation — and new flexibility in course…
Public schools will be required to teach students at least five hours of mental health instruction beginning in sixth grade, under a mandate approved by the state Board of Education Wednesday and hailed by Florida’s top educator as a “life saver.” Read More
Over six weeks, the vandals kept coming, knocking the school system’s network offline several times a day.There was no breach of sensitive data files, but the attacks in which somebody deliberately overwhelmed the Avon Public Schools system in Connecticut still proved costly. Classroom lesson plans built around access to the internet had come to a…
Real estate agents, teachers’ spouses, homebuilders and parents joined educators this week in perusing the school grades released by the Florida Department of Education. The annual grading of schools sends ripple effects throughout the state, impacting home values, teacher bonuses, the value of land and where parents opt to send their children to school. Read…