On the Agenda: Florida Ed Meetings during the Final Committee Week

ByAccountabaloney

The Florida Legislature meets again this week for their fifth, and final, Committee Week before the 2022 Session. The 2022 Legislative Session will begin January 11th and is scheduled to run through March 11th.

On Tuesday, November 30th, Senator Joe Gruters will present SJR244 before the Senate Ethics and Election committee (meeting begins at 3:30pm, agenda here). SJR244 proposes a constitutional amendment to make local school board elections partisan (currently, the races are non-partisan) and to move all school board races to the General Election (currently, any candidate who gets 50%+1 of the vote wins their election in August.). If SJR244 (and its House companion HJR35, sponsored by Fort Myers Rep. Spencer Roach) pass, then the proposal would go before voters on the November 2022 ballot. It is the opinion of Accountabaloney that MORE politics will not solve public education’s issues. Partisan school boards will be more beholden to party politics rather than what is in the best interest of their students and local stakeholders.

Here’s what else is on the Calendar for Week 5. Education committees are meeting on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Both the House and the Senate will be hearing bills.

Monday November 29, 2021:

No Scheduled Education Committees.

Tuesday , November 30, 2021:

12:30 — 3:00 PM Senate Education

The Senate Education committee will be hearing bills. Expanded Agenda here.

Senator Diaz has three proposed bills on the agenda.

  • SB506: Among other things, this bill amends the Hope Scholarship statute, which previously gave vouchers to students claiming to be victims of bullying, to offer a private school voucher to any student who “attends a school overseen by a district school board that is subject to ongoing action initiated by the State Board of Education.” (Can you say “mask mandates”?) The bill converts the Hope Scholarship to an Education Savings Account, expanding the approved uses of the Hope Scholarship beyond tuition to include Instructional Materials, including digital devices, fees for Advanced Placement Exams and other nationally standardized exams and certifications, and contributions to college savings programs. Full text here.
  • SB622: Asks for an appropriation of $1 million in recurring funds to Miami Dade College to create and establish the “Florida Institute for Charter School Innovation,” which (among other things) would “create a state resource of best practices for charter school applications and application review.” Remember that Senator Diaz’s “day job” is working for Academica, a for-profit private education company and one of Florida’s largest charter school management companies. Full text of SB622 here.
  • SB758: Creates “The Charter School Review Commission” within the Department of Education to review and approve applications for charter schools to be, then, overseen by district school boards. This “Review Commission” would approve charter applications and then require local school districts to sponsor the charter schools the commission approves. SB758 also includes the sentence: “It is the intent of the Legislature that charter school students be considered as important as all other students in this state and, to that end, comparable funding levels from existing and future sources should be maintained for charter school students.” The bill appears to grant charter schools access to district discretionary millage, impact fees, etc. Who remembers when charter schools were celebrated as requiring less funding than traditional public schools?  Full text here.

Wednesday, December 1, 2021:

11:00 AM House Secondary Education & Career Development Subcommittee

Agenda here. The subcommittee will hear presentations on:

  • Electrocardiograms for student athletes
  • Transparency requirements relating to curriculum and instruction and school district budgeting and accountability – expect lawmakers to use the presented data to suggest that school boards are not complying with current mandates (which is exactly what happened when the Early Learning and Elementary Education subcommittee heard a similar presentation during Committee Week 4.)

1:30 pm House Early Learning & Elementary Education Subcommittee

Agenda here. Two bills will be heard:

  • HB 153 – Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children, moves the future repeal of the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children from July 1, 2022 to July 1, 2025. Bill text here.
  • HB 225 – Charter School Charters. Bill text here.

Thursday, December 2, 2021

9:00 am House Post-Secondary Education & Lifelong Learning Subcommittee

Agenda here. The subcommittee will hear presentations on higher education affordability, accelerated mechanisms, and student advising.

Recall that last session legislators tried to eliminate guaranteed funding for Bright Futures scholarships, presumably to free up lottery proceeds for other education expenses (I’m guess they were thinking vouchers…).  There was tremendous public outcry and, ultimately, the funding guarantee for Bright Futures was NOT eliminated but the Benacquisto Scholarship, which provided generous scholarships to attract out-of-state National Merit Scholars to Florida Universities, was eliminated and a new scholarship was created offering in-state tuition to out-of-state students if their grandparents were Florida residents (dubbed the “memaw” tuition discount). Parents and students counting on Bright Futures for future college expense might want to watch this subcommittee meeting.

11:00 am House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee

Agenda here. The subcommittee will hear three appropriations bills and discuss the “Results of the Final Calculation of the Fiscal Year 2020-2021 Florida Education Finance Program.”

Neither the Senate Education Appropriations subcommittee nor the House Education and Employment committee will be meeting during Committee Week 5.

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.

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