Superintendent of year: Malcolm Thomas, leader of the Escambia County School District, is selected as Florida's superintendent of the year by the Florida Association of District School Superintendents. "He's a visionary, and above all there's never any question in anybody's mind where is heart is, and that is in the classroom," says State Sen. Bill Montford, executive director of the association. Thomas was first elected superintendent in 2008, then re-elected twice. He's retiring when his term expires in 2020, and the Escambia superintendent position will then become an appointed one. Pensacola News Journal. Gradebook.
H.B. 7069 lawsuit: In a court filing, the state disputes the contention of 11 district school boards that a 2017 education bill is unconstitutional. The boards allege that H.B. 7069 illegally takes authority from local boards to approve charter schools, and exempts some charter schools, called "schools of hope," from regulations public schools must follow. The law was upheld by a circuit judge last spring, which prompted appeals from boards in Alachua, Bay, Broward, Hamilton, Lee, Orange, Pinellas, Polk, St. Lucie and Volusia counties, and a separate appeal from the Collier County board. News Service of Florida. (more…)
School choice wins: A clear winner in Tuesday's elections in Florida is school choice, according to the founder of the state's tax credit scholarship program. "When given a clear choice between a candidate who supports empowering parents to choose K-12 options for their children and a candidate who wishes to restrict those choices, voters prefer the candidate who supports educational choice," says John Kirtley, whose Florida Federation For Children donated about $1.6 million to school choice supporters in 39 key races around the state. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, helps administer the tax credit scholarship and several others. Gradebook.
Education challenge: The Florida Supreme Court hears oral arguments today in a 2009 case that claims the inadequacy of funding for education is a violation of the state constitution. Citizens for Strong Schools, the plaintiffs, lost at trial and in an appeal as judges ruled that the constitutional amendment requiring a "high quality education" uses political terms that can't be objectively measured. Another plaintiff, Eunice Barnum of Jacksonville, says her then-elementary aged children "were failing in math, failing in reading, even though they were there every day. The constitution clearly says that it’s the paramount duty of the state to provide a high quality education. And, you know, when I went to school, ‘F’ was never considered high quality. It just wasn’t.” WJCT. Orlando Sentinel. (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…)
