FSBA #FridayFive – 5 Things You Should Know Each week, Executive Director, Andrea Messina, compiles a top 5 list of news stories that School Board Members should know about: Website Development School To Open In Wyoming More states sue over transgender bathroom directive Florida parents crowd funding fight against third grade retention What’s good in public…
The Florida Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott didn’t see eye-to-eye on much during the 2016 session, but they both acknowledged education spending should go up. Even then, however, they couldn’t agree on how to do it. Scott wanted to pay for it almost entirely by increasing a share of property taxes known as the Required…
TALLAHASSEE – How Florida gives state money to organizations that provide after-school care, such as Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Boys & Girls Clubs, won’t change anytime soon. The 2016-17 budget that Gov. Rick Scott signed Thursday maintains a decades-old funding structure that designates money to a handful of prominent organizations — which means an…
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott surprised many observers on Tuesday when he announced plans to veto $256 million in projects, a much smaller list than expected after lawmakers blocked some of his top legislative priorities. While it’s more than $200 million larger than the veto list last year, which sparked anger among many members who…
TALLAHASSEE — The Legislature sent a massive omnibus education bill to Gov. Rick Scott’s desk on Friday after spending the final hours of the 2016 legislative session negotiating privately and trading several amendments that were each more than a hundred pages long. The House voted 82-33 on Friday to pass a heavily amended HB 7029, a…
TALLAHASSEE — The Legislature plans to spend a total of $31.8 billion in state and local funds on education in 2016-17, according to the final state budget introduced on Tuesday. That includes $20.2 billion for K-12 public schools distributed through the state’s funding formula, the Florida Education Finance Program. The sum is made up of…
TALLAHASSEE — House and Senate leaders announced a deal on the state budget during a late-night meeting Monday, pumping more than $120 million in last-minute projects into the spending plan and setting the Legislature on course to end its annual session Friday, as scheduled. The final negotiating session between the budget chiefs for the two…
Florida’s 650 charter schools and 3,600 traditional public schools would each get a pot of $75 million in state funds next year to spend on construction and maintenance projects, under a budget agreement the House and Senate appropriations chairmen announced Sunday afternoon. The figure — about the same as what Republican Gov. Rick Scott had asked for — is $25 million more…
TALLAHASSEE — Lawmakers have agreed on a $400 million tax-cut package that is a shadow of the $1 billion in reductions sought by Gov. Rick Scott. The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday unanimously advanced a key portion of the plan (HB 7099), which is centered on a $290 million cut in local property taxes for…
TALLAHASSEE –The Legislature opened final negotiations on a budget Friday by delivering crushing defeats to Gov. Rick Scott on his two priorities of tax cuts and incentive money to attract jobs. Scott had insisted on $1 billion in tax relief, but legislative leaders settled on $400 million, half of which is for one year. Scott…