Charter schools. The Florida Senate may be warming to the House's Schools of Hope plan, but it has its own designs on how to structure it. redefinED. News Service of Florida. Hinting at a possible compromise, Senate budget chief Jack Latvala likens a deal on the charter school proposal to "eating some dinner that they’ve made for us that doesn’t taste real good." WFSU. Large school districts push back on the plan. Times/Herald. Florida Politics. WJXT.

Sunshine law. Parents seek charges from prosecutors, accusing a charter school that expelled their son of retribution and hiding public records. Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Growth. Accommodating a surge of new students could cost the Hillsborough County school district, as it would be forced to take on debt and undergo painful rezoning. Tampa Bay Times.

Leadership. Broward school district chief Robert Runcie says he doesn't sweat national hot-button political issues. Faces of Education. (more…)

The fate of two pieces of legislation - one increasing access to dual enrollment classes for private school students, and one overhauling the rules governing high school sports and other extracurricular activities - looked uncertain going into the penultimate week of Florida's legislative session.

The dual enrollment bill had gotten traction in the Senate, where Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, was trying to address an unintended consequence of funding changes made two years ago that created a dilemma for some private schools whose high school students wanted to earn college credit. A similar bill had not been heard in the House.

The high school sports bill, meanwhile, was taken up Tuesday on the House floor and will likely come up for a vote today, but had faced an uncertain future in the Senate, where it had only cleared one of its three assigned committees.

Both measures received new life on Tuesday, when the Senate Appropriations panel added them to a massive education bill, with pages numbering in the triple digits, which tackles everything from K-12 school uniforms to the scope of the state's community college system.

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Citing concern for low-income children whose school choice scholarships are threatened by a recently filed lawsuit, a key Republican legislator is offering to play the role of peacemaker with the Florida teachers union.

In a letter to Florida Education Association President Andy Ford, which was obtained and reported by the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau, State Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, offers to serve as a "bridge" between the Republican-dominated Legislature and the union, which last week announced the first standalone constitutional challenge of Florida's tax credit scholarship program.

Latvala writes that he opposes the lawsuit, and that he's worried it could displace nearly 70,000 scholarship students currently attending private schools if it succeeds. The Florida program is the largest private school choice program in the country.

At the same time, Latvala acknowledges concerns about the program's growth. Both FEA attorney Ron Meyer and the heads of other groups that have joined the suit have said they opted not to challenge the 13-year-old program in its infancy, but that its growth has reached a tipping point in recent years.

Demand for the scholarships has continued to grow, with the program expected to serve almost twice as many students this school year as it did in 2010. The program is administered by scholarship funding organizations like Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.

In his letter, dated Wednesday, Latvala offers to "try to ensure that the current success of the program does not exceed the tipping point of what is constitutional or responsible," while also ensuring students can keep their scholarships.

An olive branch to the teachers union has more credibility coming from Latvala than it might coming from other Republicans in the Legislature.

He's known for assembling bipartisan coalitions to kill bills backed by legislative leaders. The past two years, he was instrumental in beating back changes to the state pension system opposed by the FEA and other public-sector unions. He is also considered the more moderate of the two contenders vying to become Senate President in 2016.

JoAnne McCall, the FEA vice president who has been the union's most prominent figure in its recent battles against private school choice programs, told the Times/Herald she would be open to working with Latvala on a range of issues. But she adds the suit, in which she's the lead plaintiff, will proceed in the meantime.

Parent trigger history repeated itself in Florida's Senate today. After deadlocking last year on a plan to let parents vote to take over struggling public schools, the Senate was offered a milder approach this year that put the parent trigger finger in the hands of the elected School Board in each county. It didn't matter. The bill again went down on a 20-20 vote.

Given that the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn on Friday and a parent trigger bill that passed earlier this month in the House contains more explicit language, the Senate vote likely signals an end to the fight for 2013.

The bill had been amended on Monday by a moderate Republican, David Simmons, to vest the final decisions about school turnaround strategies with school boards -- and not with parents. Sponsors were hoping the change would clear the way for approval on the floor. But key Republicans still voted against it. Most telling was the opposition of Jack Latvala, who voted in favor of the more stringent parent trigger bill last year as he was in the midst of fighting for votes to be elected Senate president. To date, Latvala has failed in that quest.

Florida’s parent trigger bill is headed to the Senate floor after another predictable party-line committee vote. But odds are rising that this year’s model will bring as much last-minute drama as its predecessor did last year, when several Republicans broke rank to kill the measure.

In the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, bill sponsor Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, said a recent amendment giving school districts - and not the state - the final say in a school’s turnaround plan likely would be modified.

Proposed by Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, the amendment altered the original bill’s final arbiter, the state Board of Education, and made it more acceptable to parent trigger critics. But parent trigger supporters said it watered down the bill’s intent, which is to let parents have a bigger role in determining the best way to improve their children’s schools.

Stargel said Tuesday that neither she nor Simmons – nor the majority of the education appropriations committee that passed it April 11 - really wanted that language in the bill.

“We would not want parents to come together to work so hard to get 50 percent of the parents (to support a turnaround plan), and just have their voices taken under advisement, if you will,’’ she said.

Still, she said, any changes would happen after Tuesday's vote. That raised concerns among some committee members, most notably Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater.

“So that would lead me to conclude that you’re going to remove that exemption at some point in time – or attempt to remove it,’’ he said.

Answered Stargel: “We’re going to modify this bill going forward, but we’re not sure in what way.”

The committee voted 12-6 in favor of the measure, with Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto absent. The Fort Myers Republican had filed an amendment the day before, calling for the state to remain the final arbiter, but Stargel withdrew the proposal. (more…)