Amendment 8 appeal: The state’s Office of the Attorney General announces it plans to appeal a Leon County judge's decision to remove proposed constitutional Amendment 8 from the November ballot. Judge John Cooper ruled that the amendment, which would allow the Legislature to create an organization to authorize charter schools, set term limits for school board members and require civics education in schools, is "misleading" because it doesn't inform voters of its true purpose. News Service of Florida. Orlando Sentinel. WFSU. Four former Florida legislators start a group, Save My Constitution, that's calling on voters to reject all eight of the constitutional amendments proposed by the Constitution Revision Commission. They say the proposals are "confusing" and "misleading." Tallahassee Democrat. News Service of Florida.
Redirecting funds: Gov. Rick Scott wants legislators to allow school districts to use money that was set aside to arm school employees for other school security measures. Lawmakers allocated $67 million to arm school employees but only 24 of the 67 districts were interested, so only about $9.4 million has been used. Scott wants the remaining funds to be distributed among districts, prorated by enrollment, for any school security expenses. News Service of Florida. WLRN. Florida Politics. (more…)
Amendment 8 off ballot: A Leon County judge rules that proposed constitutional Amendment 8 should be removed from the November ballot because it "fails to inform voters of the chief purpose and effect." The amendment would allow the Legislature to create an entity to authorize charter schools. It would also set term limits for school board members and require civics education in schools. Judge John Cooper agreed with the plaintiffs, the League of Women Voters, that the ballot language was misleading and that the Citizens Review Commission bunched the three separate proposals to boost its chance of passage. The state is expected to appeal the decision. News Service of Florida. Associated Press. Tampa Bay Times. Orlando Sentinel. Florida Phoenix. WFSU. Southern Poverty Law Center. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi files a response to the Supreme Court to a separate challenge from former chief justice Harry Lee Anstead, who contends six amendments are unconstitutionally bundled and should be removed from the ballot. Bondi argues that only the ballot proposals put forward by the public through petitions need to adhere to the state's single-subject rule because they don't have the oversight that the Constitution Revision Commission and Legislature have when creating and adopting proposals. Gradebook. Florida Politics.
Education lawsuit: Each side in a nine-year-old lawsuit over the way the state funds education will get 20 minutes Nov. 8 to make their cases before the Florida Supreme Court. The group that filed the suit, Citizens for Strong Schools, claims the state is failing in its constitutional duty to provide a "high quality" public education system. The state argues that the constitutional language is aspirational and can't be measured. Two courts have already sided with the state. Gradebook. WFSU. News Service of Florida.
Videos won't be shown: After parents questioned plans to show elementary and middle school students videos of what to do during a school shooting, Pinellas County school officials change course and say the videos won't be shown to elementary students. Instead, the district will put the videos on its website so parents can decide whether to show them to their children. WTVT. Tampa Bay Times. WFLA. Parents in St. Johns County also object to videos the school district plans to show students about what they should and should not do during a school shooting. The district plans for all students to watch the videos by Sept. 15. WJXT. (more…)
Amendment 8: A Leon County circuit judge says he is likely to decide today if proposed constitutional Amendment 8 will stay on the November ballot or be removed because it's misleading. At a hearing Friday, a lawyer for the state said the ballot title and summary are “a fair statement” of the amendment and that "the voters have a right to see this. It’s clear. There’s nothing misleading about it.” A lawyer for the League of Women Voters, which is challenging the amendment, says the ballot title and summary are “misleading” and “deceptive” because they don't explain that voters would be stripping local school boards of the authority to oversee charter schools. Florida Politics. WJCT. News Service of Florida. Gradebook. Florida Phoenix. Politico Florida.
School security: A shooting between adults sparks pandemonium during a practice football game at Palm Beach Central High in Wellington on Friday night and raises questions about how even the greatly increased safety measures at schools are able to protect students. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw says two suspects targeted the victims because of unspecified past dealings. A 29-year-old is in critical but stable condition and a 39-year-old, the father of one of the players in the game, is in stable condition. The district has announced some changes for this week's games. Palm Beach Post. Associated Press. WPLG. Miami Herald. Sun-Sentinel. The Pinellas County School District will show students videos this week that instruct them how to respond during a school shooting. All follow the run-hide-fight strategy. There are versions of the videos for students in kindergarten through 2nd grade, in grades 3-5 and for middle-schoolers. Active-assailant drills are expected to begin soon in schools. Gradebook. (more…)
Return to Stoneman Douglas: The first day of school at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland was bittersweet for students who lived through the massacre Feb. 14, with student emotions mixed with hope for the future but weighted by the grief of the past. “That’s something I’ve been wrestling with,” said 14-year-old sophomore Alexa Goel, who saw her first body on that dark day and had to run for her life. “Not wanting to let it go, but also moving forward with my life.” Security was tight, but even that wasn't reassuring for some students. “There’s literally no place that I am every day that I feel 100 percent safe and the thought doesn’t go through my head that someone could come in with a gun,” said 15-year-old Samantha Deitsch. Sun-Sentinel. Miami Herald. WLRN. Palm Beach Post. Associated Press.
School security problems: The Florida Legislature shortchanged the state's school districts by not providing enough money to pay for the security measures it mandated, says Damien Kelly, executive director of the Florida Department of Education’s Office of Safe Schools. “All 67 sheriffs are on the same page. They don’t think the funding is where it needs to be,” says Kelly. Orlando Sentinel. Fort Lauderdale police officers filled in to guard schools in the city on opening day Wednesday, just a day after the Broward County School District informed the city it was short of armed guards for 13 schools. Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis calls the district's last-minute plea for help "disappointing.” Sun-Sentinel. Despite the focus on school security, Broward County summer schools had no security presence. Miami Herald. Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs and Sheriff Jerry Demings trade accusations about who's at fault for a shortage of deputies to cover county schools on opening day. Orlando Sentinel. Safe Schools director Damien Kelly says the new app FortifyFL will be available in two weeks. It will allow people to anonymously report suspicious activities in schools. Associated Press. News Service of Florida. (more…)
More disaster funding: The U.S. Education Department is giving Florida another $95.8 million in disaster assistance, even though the state has yet to spend any of the $84.5 million it received from the federal Immediate Aid to Restart School Operations program to help schools, colleges and universities recover from hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The new funding is through the Temporary Emergency Impact Aid for Displaced Students program, which is intended to help districts that had extra enrollment of students displaced by hurricanes. Politico Florida. Orlando Sentinel.
School security: A security consultant advises the Broward County School Board against using metal detectors in schools, saying they are expensive, hard to operate efficiently, not reliable without accompanied by patdowns, and provide limited benefits and great risks. Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, says he recommended to Superintendent Robert Runcie to back off installing them. Sun-Sentinel. Schools open today in Broward County, and half the schools in Fort Lauderdale still don't have armed guards. Sun-Sentinel. Only 24 school safety specialists were working on the first day of school in Duval County - less than half the number needed to cover each of the district's elementary schools. Another 27 are expected to be hired by Labor Day, and a third round of hiring won't put those assistants in schools until after Oct. 1. Florida Times-Union. WJXT.
Amendment 8 questioned: A retired chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court files a challenge with the court charging that six proposed constitutional amendments, including the education-related Amendment 8, are unconstitutionally bundled. Harry Lee Anstead and former Florida elections commissioner Robert Barnas say that bundling prevents voters from a simple yes or no vote. Amendment 8 would put term limits on school board members, require civics education and allow entities other than local school boards to approve charter school applications. Gradebook. Flagler Live. News Service of Florida.
No metal detectors: Plans to put metal detectors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when school resumes Aug. 15 have been put on hold. “As we continue our due diligence to implement the program — consulting with vendors and experts and reviewing turnkey solutions — many issues have been raised that require the District to pause and have a more thoughtful discussion on policy and procedural aspects of this pilot,” Superintendent Robert Runcie wrote in an email to parents. District officials are still trying to work through the details on the kind of equipment needed, how to staff the detectors, how to get 3,300 students through the metal detectors in a timely fashion and maintaining student privacy. Parents had heard rumors that the use of detectors was being suspended, and quickly mounted an email campaign to Runcie with the message: “Time is of the essence. Please do it now.” Seventeen people, including 14 students, were shot to death at the school on Feb. 14. Sun-Sentinel. Miami Herald. Associated Press.
School shooting developments: A consultant's report concludes that the Broward County School District stripped accused Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz of the therapeutic services provided for special-needs students, then did not follow through when Cruz asked to return to the program. Because of those mistakes, the report says, Cruz had no counseling or special education services for the 14 months before the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. On Friday, a judge ordered the report released with redactions to protect Cruz's privacy rights, but the blacked-out portion of the report became visible when copied and pasted into another computer document. Sun-Sentinel. WPLG. New York Times. Capt. Jan Jordan, the Broward sheriff's district commander who was in charge of the office's response to the Parkland shootings, has been replaced by Capt. Chris Mulligan. Jordan was transferred to the sheriff's administration team in June. Parkland city officials had asked that she be replaced. Sun-Sentinel. (more…)
Bathroom rights upheld: A federal judge rules that transgender student Drew Adams may use the boys bathrooms at Nease High School this year. U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan wrote that Adams “poses no threat to the privacy or safety of any of his fellow students. Rather, Drew Adams is just like every other student at Nease High School, a teenager coming of age in a complicated, uncertain and changing world. When it comes to his use of the bathroom, the law requires that he be treated like any other boy.” Officials at the St. Johns County school had ordered Adams, 18, to use gender-neutral bathrooms, prompting the discriination suit against the district. Florida Times-Union. St. Augustine Record. WJAX. WJXT.
Teacher pay: An analysis of Palm Beach County School District pay records shows that the district is paying teachers with 20 years of experience $3,000 a year less in 2018 than it did in 2008. The typical 30-year teacher is earning $2,100 less, and a typical 15-year teacher is making $1,000 less. It's happened because teacher pay was frozen during the recession, salary schedules were abandoned, and the district then shifted more money toward starting pay and younger teachers. Palm Beach Post.
Tight budgets: It's school budget season, and districts are struggling to make ends meet with the funding they're receiving from the state. Officials are trying to slash costs in ways that will not violate the state's class-size amendment and least affect students, and in some cases are dipping in to reserves to close deficits. "We really try to hold schools harmless and keep them out of the fray when it comes to budget reductions," says Pasco County assistant superintendent Kevin Shibley. Tampa Bay Times. The Marion County School District needs at least $422 million for building and renovation projects over the next five years but will receive only $60.5 million. “In order to get by, we have to piecemeal many projects,” says Robert Knight, the district’s supervisor of facilities. “There is not enough money for everything.” Ocala Star-Banner. (more…)
Scholarships review: Florida’s most disadvantaged students continue to make solid academic gains through use of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, according to the latest annual evaluation of standardized test results released by the Florida Department of Education. Students on scholarships were "relatively more disadvantaged and lower-performing prior to entering the ... program," concluded the researchers from the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University, yet once on the scholarship, the students “maintain his or her relative position in comparison with all students nationally in both reading and math.” Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, helps administer the tax credit program, which is the largest in the country, as well as Gardiner, Hope and reading scholarship programs. redefinED.
Video ordered released: An appeals court rules that a surveillance video showing how law enforcement officers responded during the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14 is a public record and should be released by the Broward County Sheriff's Office in the next 48 hours. News organizations argued for the release, while the Broward state attorney's office argued against it because it's part of an ongoing criminal investigation. “Parents have such a high stake in the ultimate decisions that they must have access to camera video footage here at issue and not blindly rely on school board experts to make decisions for them,” the 4th District Court of Appeal judges wrote. Associated Press. Sun-Sentinel. (more…)
Enrollment slowdown: State analysts project that Florida's K-12 public school enrollment will grow by less than 17,000 students in the 2019-2020 school year, to about 2.86 million. That's just an 0.6 percent increase over the forecast 2.84 million students expected when schools start in August. Analysts think the state's various scholarship programs are in part responsible for the slowing growth. A new program, the Hope Scholarship for bullied students to transfer or get a state scholarship to attend private schools, begins this year and is expected to send 6,400 students to private schools by 2019-2020. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, helps administer the scholarship. News Service of Florida.
Federal funding risk: Florida risks losing $1.1 billion in federal education aid if its impasse with the U.S. Department of Education over compliance with the Every Student Succeeds Act is not resolved soon. Florida is the only state without an approved plan. The state is resisting giving state assessments tests in languages other than English for those who are just learning the language, and also in breaking down results by more student subgroups in order to target specific schools for assistance. Education Week.
Counseling firm investigation: A mental health counseling firm working in several Florida school districts is being investigated for possible Medicaid fraud by the state attorney general's office. Motivational Coaches of America (MCUSA) offers free counseling to at-risk students. But an investigation by the Palm Beach Post showed the company focused largely on so-called "sponsored" children, or those with insurance or on Medicaid. The company has received more than $400,000 from Medicaid in the past two years, and has gotten unwanted public attention recently when counselors quit because they hadn't been paid. Miami New Times. WJXT. MCUSA withdraws an offer to counsel students for free in Manatee County, just a day before the school board was going to consider the proposal. No explanation was given for the company's decision. Bradenton Herald. (more…)
Homework revisited: A year after Marion County School Superintendent Heidi Maier ended homework for students, the school board will consider a policy that allows elementary school teachers to assign it again. Maier and other administrators conceded last week in a workshop session that some homework is necessary. But they don't want it to get excessive. “It needs to be meaningful and engaging,” says deputy superintendent Jonathan Grantham, not just busy work. Ocala Star-Banner.
Anti-test movement: The once vibrant movement to slow or eliminate high-stakes standardized testing as a tool for measuring student progress has slowed significantly, according to many in the field. “I think it is much quieter, whether that’s because (Every Student Succeeds Act) plans (are mostly approved) and federal law is not going to be opened up for awhile,” says Patricia Levesque, chief executive officer of Foundation for Excellence in Education, a think tank started by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But she doesn’t think the debate is dead. “A lot of things are cyclical," she says. "That’s just the way that policy is.” Many states are still tweaking details. Levesque's group, for instance, is urging states to push testing to later in the school year. Education Week.
School security: Metal detectors will be used at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School this fall, but the school district will no longer require students to have clear backpacks. Sun-Sentinel. The 20 new armed guardians for the Manatee County School District met Monday for their first day of training. More than 270 people applied for the jobs. The district chose armed guardians over sworn school resource officers because of the costs. “Let’s not rush to judgment right now,” says Pat Bartholomew, the director of safety and security for the district. “We had a very solid vetting process, a selection process, so let the training speak for itself.” Bradenton Herald. (more…)
