FSBA Session Spotlight — Governor DeSantis’ Budget Recommendation

State law requires the governor to release his/her state budget recommendations at least 30 days before the opening of the legislative session.  Governor DeSantis unveiled his state budget recommendation on Monday with time to spare.  It is important to keep in mind that the governor’s budget recommendation is exactly that:  a recommendation.  It is the…

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DeSantis’ budget: $1 billion on teacher pay, millions for elections security

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday proposed a record $91.4 billion state budget for the next fiscal year, including spending an additional $1 billion on teacher raises.  The proposed budget is more than $400 million higher than the current year and includes plans to spend millions to protect the state’s elections systems and hire hundreds of new…

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FSBA Session Spotlight — November 15, 2019

The Legislature held a 5th week of Interim Committee Meetings this week.  Several bills and topics of interest were considered, including funding, health and safety, public records, and ethics.  The outcome of the legislative meetings of interest is provided in the first file below.  In addition, updates on several federal issues are provided in the…

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Ron DeSantis seeks tier-based Best and Brightest replacement

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday a plan to replace the Best and Brightest bonus program to reward teachers and principals with tier-based systems.  DeSantis, joined by Department of Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran in Vero Beach, called for $300 million in teacher and principal bonuses in the Florida Classroom Teacher and Florida School Principal Bonus programs. Read More

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FSBA Friday Five – November 15, 2019

From Play-doh to Plato: All students need to grapple with grade-level text Community Connectors program encourages community organizations to partner to provide mentoring services to young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds Concrete ways to help students self-regulate and prioritize work Even parents are now seeing the importance of equity in parent associations Strong leadership…

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U.S. Secret Service Report on School Violence

The United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) issued a report analyzing targeted school violence. This report expands upon twenty years of NTAC research in threat assessment and violence prevention. In line with this effort, NTAC conducted a study of 41 incidents of targeted school violence from 2008 to 2017. Read More Read the Report

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Senate workforce bill expands to include all public schools

Aiming to align career education to the needs of employers, state Sen. Travis Hutson proposed legislation to direct job growth grant fund money to certain charter schools that specialized in career-technical graduation pathways.  His bill (SB 130) quickly attracted criticism from observers who wanted to know why only charter schools would benefit from the plan. Read More

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