Florida School Boards Association
Local schools are dealing with serious teacher shortages but an Action News Jax investigation has found thousands of prospective teachers are being kept out of the classroom because they can’t pass a mandatory test to become fully licensed. Read More
Florida is planning to reinvent school-based mental health awareness, but Florida International University (FIU) psychologists are raising questions about the plan’s implementation. The goal is to help students identify the signs and symptoms of mental illnesses, how to get help for themselves and others and what to do or say to peers affected by a…
Of the 50 states, Florida’s prekindergarten program has the highest percent of 4-year-olds enrolled in the early learning programs. Only Washington D.C. has a higher percentage. Nearly 175,000 little students attended in 2017-18 — 77 percent of Florida’s 4-year-olds. That’s according to a 2018 analysis called “The State of Preschool 2018.” Read More Read the…
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 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…
After a state commission found out Wednesday that nearly 200 schools, including many charter schools, have not had armed security as required by state law, commissioners urged the Florida Department of Education to “name names and name people” to try to force compliance. Within two hours, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran agreed to publicly name non-compliant school…