With the 2018 legislative session just weeks away, key failures of the 2017 Legislature continued to frustrate local elected leaders at separate meetings Tuesday in Collier County. Two positive steps the Legislature could take in the next session that starts in January are to immediately repeal — then start over on components of — House…
Raising the prospect of “irreversible damage” to the public education system, nine school boards want the Florida Supreme Court to block a massive education law approved in May.The school boards late Monday filed a constitutional challenge at the Supreme Court to the bill, which has become known in the education world by the shorthand HB…
Private schools in Florida will collect nearly $1 billion in state-backed scholarships this year through a system so weakly regulated that some schools hire teachers without college degrees, hold classes in aging strip malls and falsify fire-safety and health records. Read More — Part 1 Read More — Part 2 Read More — Part 3
Just to get it on the record here, thirteen Florida school boards including Pinellas County filed suit Monday in Leon County court, challenging the constitutionality of several provisions within the law created by HB 7069. The lawsuit comes as no surprise. Speculation ran rampant that such a legal battle would emerge from almost the moment after the…
The Legislature held the first round of Interim Committee Meetings last week in preparation of the upcoming 2018 Legislative Session. Please click on the file below to access our report on the bills and presentations that were considered. In addition, please click on the other files listed below for a few quick updates on items of interest.…
When Edgardo Ortiz boarded a flight from Puerto Rico to Florida on Oct. 7, with his wife and 9-year-old daughter, he didn’t have a concrete plan for what would happen next. He planned to stay with his aunt in Kissimmee, enroll his daughter in school, and look for a job. Read More
Crisis, what crisis? Just a year after dire predictions that the state’s economy was in peril due to rising insurance costs, Florida businesses could see an average 9.3 percent reduction in workers’ compensation premiums in the coming year under a rate filing Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier will consider later this month. If approved, manufacturing businesses…
5 Things You Should Know in Education News Click below to read Executive Director Andrea Messina’s top picks for this week’s education news. Read. Learn. Share. Retweet. 1. Think traditional public schools are short on choice? Think again: READ ABOUT IT 2. Innovative school model-NY’s Portfolio School: READ ABOUT IT 3. Understanding the impacts of the “word…
A new study supports what many local educators have long suspected: Florida is one of the worst places to be a teacher. Florida ranks fifth from the bottom out of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., according to a study from the personal finance website WalletHub, which analyzed data on a variety of factors including…
The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, along with seven Florida teachers are suing the state, the Florida Department of Education and all 67 public school districts. That includes university lab schools, Florida Virtual School and the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind. At issue: whether the state’s “Best and Brightest” teacher…