Your vote is your voice. When we don’t vote, our democracy suffers. Our children need to see us as active participants in the voting process. If you don’t know where your polling place is, you can find it here. Here’s some important points about voting from the Florida Division of Elections: The polls are open…
DetailsFlorida’s marquee public education trial, Citizens for Strong Schools, filed in 2009, begins today. Thanks to the herculean pro bono efforts of the Southern Legal Counsel, this is truly a citizen-driven lawsuit. Just about every “education reform” policy legislators have imposed on our children and teachers through Florida’s A-F Accountability scheme is on the table. Fund Education…
DetailsUrgent help needed today. Rep. Fresen has turned HB 7029 into a 170 page monster train chock full of charter school perks. The bill arrived in the House containing some rare charter school accountability measures such as preventing operators from profiting off of third party real estate schemes. That’s gone. Take action now. Tell the Senate to…
DetailsThe Florida House and Senate appropriations chairs have agreed on public education funding. Floor votes to adopt the final budget take place this Friday, March 11th. Unfortunately, instead of a promised “historic” funding level to public education, legislators have agreed to a disgraceful 1% increase. Take action today. 1% to public education is unacceptable. The current…
DetailsTake action today and urge the Senate to stand strong and deny the grossly biased Best & Brightest from being rolled up into the Budget, avoiding open debate. We strongly object to the House’s cowardly path of letting Best & Brightest hitch a ride in the budget and expect the Senate to reject the House’s…
DetailsThe Budget Conference met this weekend and by 9:20 pm Sunday evening, discussions hit a wall over everything but shaving their meager per pupil funding increase from 2% to 1% to be funded from general revenue, not another property tax increase as Governor Scott proposed. This is an election year rejection of a craven pattern…
DetailsTake action today! Computer Coding is not a foreign language! HB 887 by Rep. Janet Adkins makes computer coding equal to foreign language studies. This bill, which is the companion to the controversial SB 468 by Sen. Ring, hits the house floor this week. Florida already allows computer science to count toward high school science…
DetailsOnce again, the Florida Senate is resorting to the deliberate distraction of shoving 30+ different ideas into “train bills” which lack transparency making the whole enterprise grossly unfair to the public. Appropriations chair Sen. Tom Lee conceded to the Palm Beach Post, “It confuses the members. People don’t know what’s in the legislation. … I…
Detailsby: Paula Dockery, 2.25.16|Tampa Tribune The Florida Legislature, particularly the House, is hell-bent on pushing its charter school facility funding and expansion agenda at the expense of the state’s traditional public schools. Let me be perfectly clear. I don’t oppose charter schools. In fact, I’ve been very supportive of them. While in the Legislature I…
DetailsAfter much Senate posturing, the Best & Brightest, sporting recently passed House language, is now stuffed into SB 524 by Sen. Gaetz in a “train.” It is in this form that the $44M teacher bonus program once called “stupid” by Sen. Detert will be heard in Thursday’s Senate Appropriations Committee. Take action today & say…
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