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House Action Alert

We’ve reached the part of the session where bills go to the floor. Please contact your Representative in the House and urge them to increase the funding for SPED in HB 2007, the budget bill. Last week, the House Appropriations Committee voted to slash additional SPED funding from the $30 million that came out of a bipartisan vote in the K-12 Education Budget Committee. (Recall the Governor and State Board of Education have recommended around 5 years of $72 million annual increases to make up for the current shortfall, and the legislature funded the first $72 last year.)...
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How is One Legislator Able to Undermine Efforts to Fund Public Education?

We have been glad that Rep. Kristey Williams is no longer leading the K-12 Education Budget Committee but as Vice Chair as the House Appropriations Committee she is continuing to attempt to undermine efforts to improve public education. We hope the committee gets an education on the need for significant increases in special education to reduce the millions of dollars districts are taking from their general education budgets to fund mandated SPED services. As Rep. McDonald explains here the false method of calculating SPED funding was debunked last year. Contact members of the House Appropriations Committee , especially...
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Millions flow to wealthy families, pricey private schools under Florida’s supercharged voucher program

Vouchers are welfare for the wealthy. The myth of helping poor kids yields to the nightmare of using tax dollars to subsidize exclusionary religious private schools for wealthy and paying subprime voucher schools for the poor. “Once reserved for low-income students and those with disabilities, state scholarships, often called vouchers, are now available to all – and they’re fueling an unprecedented pipeline of public money, estimated at $3.4 billion this year, into private, mostly religious schools across the Sunshine State… “‘This is just a subsidy for wealthier people — people who already have the advantage,’ said state Rep....
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