Death penalty proposed: Broward County prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against accused Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz. Cruz, 19, is accused of murdering 17 people at the school on Feb. 14, and wounding 17 others. Cruz's public defender says he will not contest guilt, but will focus on his troubled past to try to convince jurors to spare his life. Miami Herald. Associated Press. Palm Beach Post. CNN. An attorney for Stoneman Douglas High student Anthony Borges, who was gravely wounded in the shooting, wants both the prosecutors and public defenders off the Cruz case because they endorsed a program in 2016 to “eliminate the school to prison pipeline.” Sun-Sentinel.
National School Walkout: Students at about 3,000 U.S. schools are expected to join the National School Walkout today to protest gun violence. The protest comes one month after the shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Time. Associated Press. The 74. Education Week. Vox. Students around the state plan to participate in the walkout, and schools are deciding how they will deal with it. Palm Beach Post. Orlando Weekly. Tampa Bay Times. Pensacola News Journal. Florida Today. Fort Myers News-Press. WLRN. WFTV. WJAX. WFLA. The Florida ACLU is urging superintendents not to interfere with students or punish them if they participate in the walkout. Gradebook. How young is too young to participate in today's walkout? New York Times. A Lake County School Board member apologizes for calling a Stoneman Douglas student a "crisis actor." Daily Commercial.
School safety plans: School superintendents are lobbying members of Congress to revise the STOP School Violence Act so it won't be extended to private schools. "We support a revision to ensure that any resources made available to non-public school settings be funneled through an ‘equitable services’ provision, already in place through the Every Student Succeeds Act," according to a letter from the American Association of School Administrators. Politico Florida. U.S. House Democrats will hold a forum next week to review ways to prevent violence in schools. Politico Florida. Teachers can already carry guns in 14 states. USA Today. Parents of students murdered at Parkland urge the Constitution Revision Commission to let Florida voters decide on a three-day waiting period and on raising the age limit to buy guns. In Lakeland, the father of another murdered Parkland student asks the Polk County School Board to approve a plan to arm some school employees. Tampa Bay Times. GateHouse. Lakeland Ledger. Members of the public urge the Bay County School Board not to arm school employees. Panama City News Herald. A majority of the St. Johns County School Board members oppose arming school workers. St. Augustine Record. The Citrus County School Board is asking the sheriff to split the cost of adding five resource officers to schools for the rest of the school year. Citrus County Chronicle. Pinellas County School Board members vote to not arm any school workers other than law enforcement officers. Gradebook. (more…)
Education budgets: Leaders in the Florida House and Senate may be $538 million apart in their proposed education budgets, but both seem optimistic there's enough middle ground to strike a deal. House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O'Lakes, says talks are collegial and he expects the differences to be "smoothed over." Senate PreK-12 Appropriations chairman David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, praised several programs in the House budget, particularly the $200 million proposal to create "schools of hope" - charter school options for persistently low-performing schools. "We are all on the same team," Simmons said. Meanwhile, the Senate passes its $85 billion spending bill. That's $4 billion more than the House budget, which is expected to be approved in that chamber today. Gradebook. Politico Florida. Support for the "schools of hope" program are divided along party lines. Leading Democrats are blasting the proposal, saying it will shortchange struggling schools that are already burdened by Legislature-imposed restrictions the charter schools do not have. Republicans dismiss the objections, saying the state cannot be content with 70,000 students stuck for years in persistently low-performing schools. Miami Herald. redefinED. Florida Politics. Sunshine State News. Politico Florida. Capitol News Service. WFSU.
Facilities funding: Two groups with different constituencies are lining up to fight the bill that determines how much state funding traditional public schools and charter schools get for facilities. Democrats are trying to amend Senate Bill 376, which would require school districts to share facilities funding with charter schools. They want to allow local districts to raise more money through property taxes, cap the amount charter schools can get and give local school boards the authority to decide on sharing. Meanwhile, charter school companies are fighting a clause denying funds to charter schools that receive D grades from the state for two straight years. Politico Florida. redefinED.
Chronic absenteeism: Kindergartners have the highest rate of chronic absenteeism of any grade in the Sarasota County School District. Students are judged to be chronically absent if they miss 21 or more days of schools. In the 2015-2016 school year, 8 percent of the district's kindergartners had at least that many absences. “It really matters because kindergarten is where they’re really learning to read rather than reading to learn,” said Sarah Mickley, a kindergarten teacher at Bay Haven School of Basics Plus. Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
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