Is It That Time Already? Committee Weeks begin Monday

Expanded School Choice?

Universal Vouchers/Education Savings Accounts?

School Board Term Limits? (Yep!)

Alternate Charter Authorizers?

State Takeover of Local School Districts?

Online Preschool?

Armed classroom pets?

What do our Florida lawmakers have planned for us this session? Who knows? But we are about to find out!

The 2020 Florida Legislative session begins in January (it’s early, because it is an election year), and that means it is time to start committee weeks! Week #1 begins on Monday, September 16th. As always, if you can’t attend committee meetings in person, you can always watch on The Florida Channel.

This session, there are fewer education committees to monitor. Two weeks ago, House leadership announced they were eliminating the House PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee, and moving some (but not all) of the members to an expanded PreK-12 Innovation subcommittee. Public education defender, Rep. Anna Eskamani, did not make the cut.

Here is the schedule for Interim Committee Week #1:

Monday September 16th

4:30 PM Senate Education

• Update on School Safety and Security Issues: last session they allowed the arming of classroom teachers… what will they come up with this year? We hope it will be more funding for much needed Mental Health professionals in our schools but we fear it will involve expansion of the Guardian Program.

Tuesday, September 17th

10:30 AM: House Education

• Overview of Early Learning: We expect an overhaul of Florida’s Voluntary Pre-K program this session, and probably not in a good way. In May, the Florida Department of Education released the 2017-2018 Voluntary Pre-K readiness rates, and statewide, only 58% of children who participated in VPK were ready for kindergarten. Governor DeSantis called the “42% failure rate is simply not defendable” on Commissioner Corcoran to prioritize the issue and direct available funding to make enhancements,

  For the record, we believe, if Florida’s children are not ready for kindergarten,  the problem probably lies with kindergarten expectations and/or the assessment and not the children… but more on that later…

• Update on Implementation of Recent Legislation: Will Chair Sullivan use this time to celebrate last year’s “historic” expansion of privatization efforts?

Wednesday, September 18

3 PM: House PreK-12 Innovation Subcommittee 

• Presentations by the Florida High School Athletics Association and Florida School Boards Association on health concerns for student athletes.

Thursday, September 19th

9:30 AM PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee

• Presentations by agencies on FY 2020-2021 Legislative Budget Requests and Schedule VIIIB-2 – Priority Listing of Budget Issues for Possible Reduction:
• Department of Education
• Office of Early Learning : Again, the focus on PreK. Expect this to be a major topic this session. In preparation, the FLDOE Office of Early Learning has a new Executive Director, Shan Goff. Goff was recently appointed by Commissioner Corcoran but should be familiar to education policy watchers. She most recently served as the Florida policy director for Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education,  and, last session, was frequently heard “waving in support” of all Jeb and Corcoran’s wacky ideas.

The Senate Education Appropriations Committee is not scheduled to meet.

Remember, last May, Florida Politics named traditional public schools the “Biggest Loser” of the 2019 Legislative Session, adding: “How much lower can they go?” We are about to find out…

Please follow along with us this legislative season (on Facebook and Twitter), stay informed, help us call out the accountabaloney and defend our public schools.