Senate education plan: Florida Senate Republicans release their own plan to change the state's education policies. Senators want to start a Family Empowerment Scholarship to reduce the 14,000-student list of low-income students waiting for a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. Their proposal is similar to Gov. Ron DeSantis' proposed Equal Opportunity Scholarship, but would be available only to students already in public schools. Senators also want to allow principals to reward high-impact teachers who don't qualify for a bonus under the state's bonuses plan, give teachers more time to pass the teacher certification exam, and expand a program that offers grants to schools in low-income communities so they can offer health care, social services and other aid to students. The proposals will be in a single bill that will be introduced the first week of the legislative session, which starts March 5. News Service of Florida. Gradebook. Florida Phoenix. redefinED. Politico Florida. Tallahassee Democrat. WFSU.

School shooting trial: South Florida Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer says she wants to start the trial of the accused Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter in January. Nikolas Cruz, 20, is charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the mass shooting just over a year ago. If convicted, he faces the death penalty. Sun Sentinel. Associated Press. Miami Herald. WLRN. (more…)

Recruiting teachers: Hillsborough County school officials will attack their teacher shortage by offering bonuses ranging from $3,600 to $7,500 to teachers who take jobs at 50 low-performing schools next fall. The bonuses also could be boosted by another $4,500 for teachers who are nationally certified. Each of the low-performing schools -- called Achievement Schools -- will get a full time psychologist, social worker, guidance counselor and nurse, and get help from subject area specialists and coaches. The $17 million plan was approved by the school board, and Superintendent Jeff Eakins says negotiations are ongoing with the teachers union. Gradebook. WUSF.

New scholarship: Gov. Ron DeSantis' proposed Equal Opportunity Scholarship would be open to a broader category of students than the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) scholarship is, according to details of the plan recently released. The maximum household income of eligible families would be 265 percent of the federal poverty level, compared with 200 percent for the FTC. Money for the new scholarship for students to attend private schools would come from general state revenues, and could grow annually. The proposal would also require private schools to test students in grades 3-10 and report the results. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, helps administer the tax credit scholarship program Florida Phoenix. (more…)

Education proposals get a look: This week, legislators will begin to consider Gov. Ron DeSantis' proposals to rework the educator bonuses program, launch an Equal Opportunity Scholarship to erase a waiting list for state scholarships for low-income students, improve career and vocational education programs, and make adjustments to the Schools of Hope program and to graduation requirements. Since announcing his ideas, DeSantis has followed up with specifics on each. State Rep. Chris Latvala, R-Clearwater, chairman of House PreK-12 Appropriations and vice chair of House Education, says legislators could approve, rewrite, or even kill the ideas. “The governor’s proposals certainly were bold. But just because he put it forth doesn’t mean it’s going to be something we automatically do.” Gradebook.

Search for standards: The Florida Department of Education is asking for input from educators, parents and others as it begins the process of rewriting Florida's version of the Common Core standards. Gov. DeSantis has given Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran a year to set new standards of what Florida K-12 students should learn in math and language arts courses. The state will use the new standards to rework the Florida Standards Assessments tests, and school districts will use the standards to determine their curricula and textbooks. Orlando Sentinel. WFTS. (more…)

New scholarship: Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to eliminate the 14,000-student waiting list for Florida Tax Credit (FTC) scholarships to attend private schools by creating another scholarship. The proposed Equal Opportunity Scholarship program would offer the same amount of money as the tax credit scholarships do - around $7,000 a year - to those 14,000 low-income students. The $100 million set aside for the new scholarship would come directly from the state, while the funding for FTC scholarships comes from companies that receive tax credits for contributing to nonprofits. “If the taxpayer is paying for education, it’s public education,” regardless of what type of school she or he attends, said DeSantis. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, helps administer the FTC program. Legislators will have to write a bill and pass it into law. News Service of Florida. Associated Press. Miami Herald. Orlando Sentinel. redefinED. Gradebook. Lawsuits are likely to follow DeSantis' call for a new scholarship. News Service of Florida. Politico Florida.

Guns and teachers: A recent statewide poll suggests a minority of Floridians support arming teachers, but the Republican-dominated Legislature is moving ahead with a bill that would arm willing teachers who get the required training. The bill passed last year specifically prohibited arming teachers. Legislators say they have come around on the issue after the state commission investigating the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas  High School in 2018 recommended that willing teachers be armed. “I want to remind members that we had members of that commission who were totally against any armed personnel being on a campus," said State Sen. Manny Diaz, R-Hialeah, "and after their serving on that commission they have come to us with this recommendation.” Sarasota Herald-Tribune. (more…)

MIAMI -- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told a crowd at Greater Miami Adventist Academy on Friday that he wants to create a state-funded program that would help reduce the number of families on a waiting list to receive the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) for lower-income families.

“I’m asking the Legislature to build off the tax credit scholarship success,” the governor said.

DeSantis proposed establishing an “equal opportunity scholarship” funded in the state budget to ensure that demand from lower-income and working class parents for educational choice can be met. The FTC currently serves nearly 100,000 lower-income students, making it the nation’s largest such program. However, about 13,000 students are on a waiting list to receive scholarships.

Reiterating a pledge he made in Orlando earlier Friday, DeSantis said the new state-funded program would help students get into environments where they will best be able to learn. The new program would provide scholarships in the same amount as the FTC, and the program’s enrollment would be capped at 14,000 students in the first year.

The announcement was met with applause from the crowd of about 700, which included Greater Miami Adventist students and faculty, media, policymakers and local black and Hispanic faith leaders; two-thirds of FTC students are black or Hispanic.

In a press release earlier Friday, the governor’s office provided more detail to the proposal. It said funding for the scholarship program would come from the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), and that the scholarship award amount would be a slight discount of the district average per-student funding in the FEFP, allowing funding to follow the student. The maximum number of students eligible to receive a scholarship would be equivalent to 0.5 percent of statewide public school enrollment for the first year, providing opportunities for approximately 14,000 students. Each year thereafter, the number of eligible students would increase by an additional 1 percent of statewide public school enrollment.

The FTC program (administered by nonprofits like Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog) helps lower-income families pay for private school tuition or transportation costs to an out-of-district public school. A recently released study by the Urban Institute showed that students on the program are enrolling and completing college at higher rates than their public school peers.

“Even today, there are people in Florida who want to end the scholarship. As long as I’m governor, we’re going to have this scholarship,” DeSantis said to big applause. “If things are working, stick with it and build up that success.

In 2018-19, enrollment in the FTC program dropped for the first time in 14 years. In the preceding 13 years, the average annual enrollment increase was 20 percent. The enrollment dip was due to slower growth in corporate contributions, according to the state Department of Revenue.

Demand for the program remains strong. Parents for more than 170,000 students had started applications by the time Step Up halted the application process in June.

Step Up has already awarded 76,980 scholarships for 2019-20, approximately 20,000 students ahead of last year. Another 12,505 new students have started applications since the process opened Feb. 8. Since Monday new students are starting applications at a rate of more than 1,000 a day.

“The scholarships these students get cost less than it would take to educate a student (in a traditional public school),” DeSantis said. “Look at the results. It’s been successful and taxpayer-friendly. The best authority is when the parents vote with their feet. If the scholarship wasn’t successful, you wouldn’t have parents waiting in line to get one.”

The governor’s words inspired hope in parent Janeris Marte, mother of Aleyna, a first-grader at Beacon Hill Preparatory School, a private school in Miami Gardens.

“Unfortunately, paperwork involving Aleyna’s transition from foster care to our home put her on the waitlist for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship,” Marte said. “This put our family in a difficult position. I am unemployed and my husband is a mechanic – we are not well off by any means. But we were determined to give Aleyna the best – we enrolled her anyway.”

Marte said Beacon Hill administrators have been patient, often allowing the family to be months behind on tuition payments. She doesn’t see their neighborhood school as an option, because the environment is unsafe.

“Schools like Beacon Hill give children like Aleyna brighter hope,” Marte said. “Ending the waiting list for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship would help so many families.”

Had funding been available in 2018-19, nearly 70,000 more students could have been awarded, Step Up President Doug Tuthill recently told the Senate Education Committee. Step Up shut down the scholarship application process last spring when it became apparent that demand could not meet supply, Tuthill said.

Maria Lancheros, mother of 14-year-old ninth-grader Ashley Hurtado, explained to the crowd why the scholarship has been important for her family. A single mother originally from Colombia, Lancheros spoke in Spanish and Ashley, an aspiring doctor who attends St. Brendan Catholic High School, translated.

“I am raising Ashley as a single mother,” Lancheros said. “I clean houses for a living, so without the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, I would not have been able to afford tuition to her private school. “I applied for the (FTC) Scholarship before Ashley entered first grade, and I am so glad she was accepted. I wanted to make sure she was in a good educational environment because the schools in our neighborhood are bad. There’s a lot of drugs and bad influences.”

Lancheros said her older daughter, Catherine Villamir, 28, helps her clean houses to support Ashley. However, Catherine is ill and needs a liver transplant.

“The scholarship means more to us now than ever,” she said. “I will work until my dying day until Ashley accomplishes everything she wants to accomplish.”

Prominent guests at Friday afternoon’s event included state Rep. James Bush III (D-Miami); Newall Daughtrey, the city manager of Opa Locka; and T. Willard Fair, president of the Miami Urban League.

When a reporter asked the governor to respond to a Democratic Party statement that the new scholarship program was merely a plan “to divert public money to special interest groups,” DeSantis turned to the assembled faith leaders, public officials, and parents behind him and asked, “Does this look like an interest group to you?”