Next week: A live chat about Florida ed reform with Sen. John Legg

Sen. John Legg
Sen. John Legg

If Florida’s education system was a big airport runway, John Legg would be one of its top air traffic controllers.

Legg is the influential state senator who chairs the Senate Education Committee. Last year, in noting how many sweeping changes to Florida’s education system were happening all at once, he likened the policy changes to jumbo jets.

“We’ve got to make sure all these big planes land in the right order and in the right way,” he said. If not, “all the planes can kind of crash in on themselves.”

Are the planes landing safely? Legg, R-Lutz, will join us next week for a live chat to talk about it. And if you have a question for him, by all means join us and/or send it over.

Plane analogies aside, there’s no doubt these are especially challenging times for Florida education reform. Common Core is under fire. Key pieces of the accountability system need a tune-up. And ever-growing parental demand for charter schools, tax credit scholarships and other school choice options continues to create friction with districts, lawmakers, teacher unions and you name it.

Few know the shifting landscape better than Legg.

He’s clearly planted in the education reform and school choice camps, but not on the dogmatic fringes. Since being elected to the Legislature in 2004, he has earned bipartisan respect and a reputation for being fair, thoughtful and thorough.

To participate in the chat, come back to the blog on Wednesday, Oct. 2. We’ll start promptly at 10:30 a.m., so click in to the live chat program – which you’ll find here on the blog – a few minutes before then.

In the meantime, if you have questions for Sen. Legg that you’d like to send in advance, please leave them in the comments section, or email them to rmatus@sufs.org, or tweet them to @redefinEDonline, or post them on our facebook page. Or all of the above!


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BY Ron Matus

Ron Matus is director for policy and public affairs at Step Up for Students and a former editor of redefinED. He joined Step Up in February 2012 after 20 years in journalism, including eight years as an education reporter with the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times). Ron can be reached at rmatus@stepupforstudents.org or (727) 451-9830. Follow him on Twitter @RonMatus1 and on facebook at facebook.com/redefinedonline.

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