A Look Ahead to Committee Week #4 – February 8-12, 2021.
Committee Week #4 falls right on the tail of Committee Week #3. Week #4 will see 2 bills heard and have multiple presentations concerning budgets and workforce programs. With the exception of the Senate Education Appropriations subcommittee, public comment will not be allowed.
Tuesday, February 9th
12:00-1:30pm: House Education and Employment
“As no filed bills or draft legislation will be considered at this meeting, public testimony will not be solicited.”
- Presentations on Florida’s Workforce System and Identification of Opportunities for Integrating the Workforce and Education System
2-3:30 pm: Senate Education Appropriations
Public Testimony will be received from Room A3 at The Donald L. Tucker Civic Center
The committee is hearing two bills from Senator Rodrigues:
- SB52: This bill creates a voucher program so that private school and homeschool students can access state funds to attend Dual Enrollment classes at local colleges and universities. When Senator Rodriques presented this bill 2 weeks ago, before Senate Education, he didn’t appear to understand his bill, saying “the bill analysis doesn’t match the briefing I received from education staff.” Hopefully he will have that straightened out this time. The bill does not address whether a student attending a private school on a publicly funded tuition voucher would also qualify for the state funded dual enrollment voucher.
- SB264: This is the bill which proposes that institutions of higher education in Florida annually measure intellectual freedom on campuses to determine if diversity of ideas are encouraged or stifled. It also forbids “shielding” college students from protected free speech.
Wednesday,February 10th
1-2:30 pm: House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee
“As no filed bills or draft legislation will be considered at this meeting, public testimony will not be solicited .”
- Presentation of the Governor’s Recommended PreK-12 Budget for Fiscal Year 2021-2022
- Update on Federal Assistance Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic for PreK-12 Education
3:30-5 pm: House Post-Secondary Education & Lifelong Learning Subcommittee
“As no filed bills or draft legislation will be considered at this meeting, public testimony will not be solicited ”
- Discussion on State University System degree program offerings, methodologies used to determine degree programs linked to in-demand careers and occupations and mechanisms to lower cost of such programs.
Not Meeting Week #4: Senate Education, House Early Learning & Elementary Education Subcommittee, House Secondary Education & Career Development Subcommittee.
Again, if we want to save public education in Florida, we need everyone to be paying attention. All meetings are live streamed and archived at thefloridachannel.org. Please follow along with us this legislative season (on Facebook and Twitter), stay informed, help us call out the accountabaloney and defend our community’s public schools.