Back So Soon? Committee Weeks begin September 20th

Ready or not, the Florida Legislature meets next week for the first Committee Week before the 2022 Session. The rest of the Interim Committee Week Schedule is here.

Here’s what’s on the Calendar for Week 1.

Monday September 20, 2021:

No Scheduled Education Committees.

Tuesday , September 21, 2021:

1:00 PM House Secondary Education and Career Development Subcommittee

Agenda here.

Presentation by the Office of Reimagining Education and Career Help on the implementation of HB 1507 (2021). HB1507 was last session’s Workforce which passed both chambers unanimously. You can learn more about it here.

2:45 pm House Early Learning and Elementary Education Subcommittee

Agenda here.

Presentation(s) on the implementation of HB 7011 (2021). Hb7011 was a massive Student Literacy bill. It, also, passed both chambers unanimously. You can learn more about it here.

4:00 PM Senate Education

Agenda here.

Presentation on K-12 Standards, Assessments, and Student Supports by Jacob Oliva, Senior Chancellor, Florida Department of Education. This may be where we hear more specifics regarding Governor DeSantis’ plan to move away from high stakes, year-end testing and create a series of high stakes “progress monitoring” assessments to collect the data necessary for the State’s Accountability system (i.e. school grades, teacher evaluation, turnaround status, student promotion/retention/graduation decisions, etc).

Wednesday, September 22, 2021:

10:15 AM House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee

Agenda here. This is the committee chaired by Brevard Representative, Randy Fine. Last session, Rep. Fine made it clear that he really dislikes his school board and wants to “hold rogue school board accountable.” Over the summer, Fine openly threaten school boards imposing mask mandates, saying he would “make sure they get hurt next year.” So yeah, House PreK-12 Appropriations will be “fun” to watch this session.

• Overview of Legislative Budget Request for FY 2022-23 by Department of Education
• Presentation on the Nonenrollment Reports Pursuant to Section 5 of Chapter No. 2021-44, Laws of Florida Which says, “Each school district shall use a portion of its non-enrollment allocation from the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund as provided in the 2021-2022 General Appropriations Act to locate unaccounted students within the school district…By September 1, 2021, each school district shall submit a report to the Department of Education that identifies the total number of unaccounted students and their status.”
• Update on Status of Allocations Versus Disbursements of Federal Coronavirus Funds

10:45 AM House Post-secondary Education and Lifelong Learning Subcommittee

Agenda here.

Presentation by the Board of Governors on implementation of:

• tuition & fee waivers as required by HB 1261, this is the”grandparent tuition waiver bill” which offers in-state tuition rates to top-performing out-of-state students if their grandparents reside in Florida full-time. The bill also required the Board of Governors to create an online dashboard that includes student graduate data and required each state university board of trustees to adopt procedures to connect undergraduate students to career planning, coaching, and related programs – these were the less controversial portions of last year’s controversial Bright Futures bill. Read more about it here.
• the intellectual freedom & viewpoint diversity assessment as required by HB 233. Among other things, HB233 required the State Board of Education (SBE) and Board of Governors of the State University System (BOG) to select or create a survey to be administered by all Florida College System (FCS) institutions and state universities annually. You can read more about it here.
• the nursing study as required by HB 1507. Read more about that here.

The Senate Education Appropriation and House Education and Employment committees are not meeting during Committee Week 1.

Last session was particularly rough on public schools. Will the session be any better? Regardless, 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.