Looking Forward to Interim Committee Week #2

The 2020 Florida Legislative session begins in January (it’s early, because it is an election year) and Committee Week #2 (October 14-18) is upon us. As always, if you can’t attend committee meetings in person, you can always watch on The Florida Channel.

Last week was full of discussion swirling around Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposal on Monday to boost Florida’s minimum teacher salary to $47,500. DeSantis held press events at three different public schools announcing his plan to set a minimum salary for teachers but, by the end of the day, there were more questions than answers. DeSantis estimated the cost of his plan to be $600 million. How will it be paid for? House Speaker, Jose Oliva, suggested that the Governor’s teacher compensation ideas might not align with the House’s requirement to craft a balanced budget. Is DeSantis planning on eliminating local districts’ rights to negotiate teacher salaries? How will that play out? Apparently this is only the first part of a teacher compensation package dreamed up by DeSantis and his Commissioner of Education, Richard Corcoran, so we will have to stay tuned for more details.

[Please note, below, that the House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee has a presentation on Florida classroom teacher compensation scheduled for Thursday, October 17th. Perhaps more details will be revealed then…]

We also saw Senate Appropriations Chair, Rob Bradley, file a bill to eliminate both the Best and Brightest Teacher bonus and the Fund Compression Allocation from the State’s Education funding formula (commonly referred to as the FEFP). Subsequently, that bill was withdrawn, reportedly due to “too many phone calls” opposed to the elimination of the Fund Compression Allocation. Perhaps this is because four of the counties Senator Bradley represents (Clay, Columbia, Suwannee and Marion) would have seen their education funding cut by more than $5 million in total? This is a good reminder that phone calls to your legislator can make a difference! Senator Bradley has since filed a new bill (SB486) that simply eliminates the Best and Brightest program, leaving the Compression Funding intact. For the record, eliminating the Best and Brightest program would free up $234 million, which could be used to help fund DeSantis’ new teacher compensation scheme.

The other education news is that the Florida Department of Education has embarked on a “Listening Tour” to get feedback regarding the new standards revision in response to Governor DeSantis’ Executive Order 19-32 to eliminate “the last vestiges of Common Core.” Each stop is only an hour long and, so far, turnout of stakeholders has been beyond expectations. The first two sessions were not video-recorded but we are hearing there are a lot of teachers warning of the disruption that another standards change will make. Learn more about the “tour,” including a list of locations, here.

Interim Committee Week #2 will occur October 14-18th. Here’s what’s on the schedule for Education:

Monday, October 14

2:30 PM Senate Education

• Overview of Educator Professional Development

Wednesday, October 16

1:30 PM: Senate Education Appropriations Committee

3 PM: House PreK-12 Innovation Subcommittee

• Presentation by the Florida Department of Education on the system of school improvement. This is important because, in June, Commissioner Corcoran and his Board of Education, frustrated that Duval County wasn’t choosing IDEA Charters as part of their turnaround for a chronically failing middle school, discussed asking the legislature for emergency powers allowing the state to override duly elected school board decisions and “literally take over the district.” Read more about that here.

Thursday, October 17

9:30 AM House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee

• Presentation on Florida Classroom Teacher Compensation. Perhaps more details of DeSantis/Corcoran’s teacher compensation plans will be revealed?
• Budget Exercise

The House Education Committee is not scheduled to meet.

Remember, last May, when Florida Politics named traditional public schools the “Biggest Loser” of the 2019 Legislative Session? This week, Senator Joe Gruters, who also serves as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, has suggested 2020 should be “the year of the teacher,” saying it is “time to recognize we are competing with other states for teachers and falling behind, and that means we must pay our teachers more than we currently are.” For the time being, we, like Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of United Teachers of Dade, “will reserve praise until we know more about how the plan will be funded and what, if anything, will need to be conceded to achieve that goal.”

Stay tuned. The devil will be in the details and we will all need to be paying attention to those details.

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.