Florida School Boards Association
When Florida’s 120 newly elected members of the state House of Representatives go to Tallahassee later this month, they will be asked to put down their cell phones. The incoming House speaker wants to an impose a ban on texting while legislating. Rep. Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, says the new rule banning lobbyists from texting…
Joe Atkinson is used to speaking in public. As Well Fargo’s South Florida region president, Atkinson oversees a large team of people. But the first time Atkinson got up in front of a group of eighth graders, he didn’t quite know what to expect. Read full article
U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. announced today that school counselors will have the opportunity to apply for the School Ambassador Fellows program starting with the 2017-18 cohort of ambassadors. The program currently includes the Teaching Ambassador Fellows (TAF) and Principal Ambassador Fellows (PAF). Including the voices of teachers, principals, counselors and other…
Associated Industries of Florida moved Tuesday to build public support behind a fix for rising workers’ compensation insurance rates that business interests see as a threat to the state’s economy. The lobby solicited comments from the public “on how Florida can restore a stable, self-executing, and affordable workers’ compensation system as the Florida Legislature intended,”…
In a small, unassuming Capitol conference room last week, state pension officials made multi-billion-dollar tweaks to the Florida Retirement System’s 1.1 million-member pension plan. The two-day conference concluded with revisions to key assumptions used to determine the value of the state pension fund. The result: another $2.6 billion in public debt. Read full article
State analysts agreed Thursday to lower the expected rate of return on Florida’s $144 billion pension fund, while warning that it may be the first in a series of annual downward adjustments. The shift from a 7.65 percent rate of return to 7.6 percent may seem slight, but it has implications for the $82 billion…
As expected, state insurance regulators have issued a final order jacking up the price of worker’s compensation insurance by nearly 15 percent. The order was published Thursday. The decision approves the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) request “for an overall combined statewide average rate increase of 14.5 percent,” the Office of Insurance Regulation said in a…
Central Florida school districts are still seeking to hire nearly 100 teachers, more than a month after classes started. They attribute the vacancies to stiff competition for candidates, high numbers of retiring teachers and growing student enrollment. Read full article
The Florida Board of Education on Friday backed a budget plan that would eliminate funding for the state’s controversial two-year-old Best and Brightest bonus, which rewards teachers based on their job evaluations and their SAT or ACT scores. Read full article
Calling it a “game changer,” Florida leaders made a sweeping overhaul of teacher evaluations in 2011, tying those reviews to student test scores in a push to boost educator quality and, in turn, student achievement. But by the numbers, the new evaluations have led to little change. At the end of the 2009-10 school year,…