On the Agenda: Florida Ed Meetings Committee Week #2
The Florida Legislature meets again next week for their second 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 2. Education committees are meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Monday October 10, 2021:
No Scheduled Education Committees.
Tuesday , October 11, 2021:
9:00 AM Senate Education
Agenda here.
Panel on Higher Education: Meeting the State’s Education, Innovation, and Workforce Needs.
11:00 AM House Education and Employment Committee
Agenda here.
Presentation(s) on the Development and Implementation of Individualized Education Programs.
Wednesday, October 13, 2021:
9:00 AM House Post-secondary Education and Lifelong Learning Subcommittee
Agenda here.
Presentation and panel discussion on Florida’s registered apprenticeship and preapprenticeship training programs.
11:00 am House Early Learning and Elementary Education Subcommittee
Agenda here.
Presentations on the implementation of HB 419 (2021), Early Learning and Early Grade Success. This was last year’s Voluntary PreK bill. It changed the governance of Early Learning and instituted a new test based accountability system from our youngest learners. Learn about concerns regarding expanding test based accountability to preschool here. HB419 passed both chambers unanimously. You can learn more about it here.
3:00 pm House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee
This is the committee chaired by Brevard Representative, Randy Fine, who, over the summer, openly threatened school boards imposing mask mandates, saying he would “make sure they get hurt next year.” So yeah, House PreK-12 Appropriations will be “interesting” to watch this session.
Agenda here.
Fiscal Issue Update by the Department of Education on:
- Implementation of HB 419 (2021), Relating to Early Learning and Early Grade Success.
- Implementation of CS/HB 7011 (2021), Relating to Student Literacy.
Among other things, HB7011 required the Department of Education to implement coordinated screening & progress monitoring system for VPK program through grade 8. On October 6th, the FLDOE issued an Invitation to Negotiate to solicit procurement of an instrument for the mandated system. You can learn more about that here. Replies to the ITN are due by 11/18/21 and negotiations will begin in January 2022.
The House Secondary Education and Career Development Subcommittee and the Senate Education Appropriations Subcommittee are not meeting during Committee Week 2.
Remember, 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.