School enrollment: Enrollment growth in the Palm Beach County School District is slowing, with new students totaling under 1,000 for the first time in more than a decade. The latest head count shows 196,000 students, about 880 more than last year. “We did expect a little more growth,” says chief financial officer Mike Burke. “But smaller gains aren’t problematic. What’s bad is declining enrollment — it’s much more difficult to deal with.” Sixty-eight of the district's 168 schools are still near-full or over capacity. Palm Beach Post.

Security shakeup: Just three months after the Sarasota County School District's police department was formed, its head of security is leaving and the police chief has been reassigned to an administrative role away from the department. To replace them, the district has hired Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office Captain Timothy Enos to be both police chief and executive director of safety and security. Security head Michael Andreas resigned, and police chief Paul Grohowski will supervise the capital improvements program and the hardening of schools project. Enos is seen as a potential bridge to help repair the recently strained relationship between Bowden and Sheriff Tom Knight over school security costs. Sarasota Herald-Tribune. (more…)

DOE budget request: The Florida Department of Education's budget request to the Legislature calls for a spending boost of $200 per student. Among the specific spending requests are $100 million more for school safety, $67.5 million for training and arming school staffers and an additional $10 million for student mental health. If the request is approved, it would represent an increase of $673 million, or 3 percent, and boost the budget to more than $21.7 billion. Last year the education budget approved by the Legislature was $321 million less than the DOE requested. Politico Florida.

Florida SAT scores lag: Florida's class of 2018 posted an average score of 1014 on the SAT exams, trailing the national average of 1068, according to the College Board. The results mirror those on the other big college admission test, the ACT. Last week, the College Board announced that Florida students scored an average of 19.9, below the national average is 20.8. About 97 percent of Florida high school graduates took the SAT, and 66 percent took the ACT. Orlando Sentinel. (more…)