Unanimous Votes, For Now…

With Committee Week #5 complete, the Florida Legislature will take some time off for Thanksgiving and then they may return for one final Committee Week (December 9-13) before the start of session on January 14, 2020. Rumor has it that the December Committee week may be cancelled.

Things were relatively quiet, and uncharacteristically agreeable, for Education in the legislature this week, with only the House PreK-12 Appropriation subcommittee and the Senate Education committee meeting. Don’t worry, it won’t remain that way. It is about to get nasty. Public Education advocates will need to fight like crazy this session if we want to protect our public schools.

The House Pre-K Appropriations subcommittee heard 17 appropriations bills and passed them all unanimously (including HB2089 which creates funding for the development of social-emotional learning and academic readiness standards, that they intend to pilot and spread across the state of Florida- we have concerns but the committee did not, they did not ask a single question or clarification).

The Senate Education Committee heard 7 policy bills ranging from piloting Early Childhood Music Programs to assuring Lead Free Drinking Water. Two bills caught our attention:

• SB130 Florida Job Growth Fund. We wrote about this bill which originally allowed certain charter schools access to Florida Job Growth Grant Funds. During the committee meeting, the bill’s sponsor, Rep Hutson, offered an amendment to the bill to allow all public and charter schools with Career and Technical Education Graduation Pathway to apply for these funds, making SB130 a much better bill. The bill, as amended, passed unanimously.
• SB154 Human Trafficking Education. Senator Thurston explained that he had introduced this same bill last year (it died in Appropriations). Since then, the State Board of Education (FLBOE) has passed a rule requiring instruction in child trafficking prevention for all K-12 public school students (excluding charter school students). Thurston proposed an amendment to his bill, adopting the language of the rules already passed by the FLBOE – specifically, removing the language in his bill allowing parents the ability to opt their children out of human trafficking instruction (parental opt out is currently allowed for things like sex education). The amendment was adopted without objection or debate. Changing bill language to match current FLBOE rules is backwards, in our opinion. We wish parents retained their right to control their child’s education by opting them out of discussions regarding human trafficking in kindergarten, if so desired. We wish Senator Thurston would expand his bill to include requirements for charter school students, as well. Proposed bills are meant to make existing laws/rules better, not to conform to what is already enacted.

All 7 bills presented before the Senate Education Committee passed unanimously. Committee Chair, and school privatizer Senator Manny Diaz Jr. warned the democrats on his committee that the collegiality they were experiencing would soon come to an end.

“I will tell you that it’s great to see all these unanimous votes, you know as we get into December and January, I’ll try to do my best to make sure we have a little bit more entertainment here…” – Diaz

You can watch him at 51:20.

Diaz thinks it’s hilarious when legislators in the majority party let the minority party know they plan to destroy public schools and there is very little that can be done to stop it. (And, since Diaz works for Florida’s largest corporate charter chain, he is laughing all the way to the bank!) We don’t find him particularly funny.

Want to help us try to save public ed in Florida? We’re going to need your help! Please follow along with us this legislative season (on Facebook and Twitter), stay informed, be ready to do what it takes to save our schools.