This legislative session, Florida Legislators had the chance to invest in public education, in our students and in our educators. Students today are bearing the brunt of repeated policy failures- an experiment that harkens back to 1999 and the flawed policies of Governor Jeb Bush and continues today with Governor Ron DeSantis.
These policy failures, entrenched in how the legislature does things to this day, have led to continual declines in SAT scores and in reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Further, students in Florida continue to have to move through a teacher and staff shortage that leaves them without qualified, highly trained educators in their classrooms. And when it comes to attracting and retaining educators, Florida is not providing wages that are keeping up with inflation- for the second year in a row the state is ranked #50 in average teacher pay.
We need common sense solutions to public education issues.
When this legislative session began- educators expected lawmakers to act on what they said. Lawmakers constantly talk about supporting educators and leadership even specifically discussed needing to allow teachers to teach and ensuring public schools could compete.
But they didn’t.
They had opportunities to meaningfully address salary compression in a way that would support Florida’s veteran teachers, had the ability to remove red-tape and create 10 year teaching certificates, had the chance to enact multiyear contracts, put university presidential searches back in the sunshine, support students by funding public education and career and college readiness programs, and finally fix the critical teacher and staff shortage.
Many of these bills, despite passing their committees and despite often having support from each chamber, failed to pass. Ultimately, politics got in the way of good policy.
Today, legislators leave Tallahassee not having agreed on a budget- allowing their feuds on politics to leave communities across the state in limbo. Florida remains on the wrong track when it comes to public education. Anti-public education lawmakers continue to fail our public schools.
At the end of the day, our students who are not supported are the ones who suffer. Our educators who are forced to walked away from their profession so they can provide for their families are the ones who suffer. And our communities who lose their neighborhood public schools because they have been whittled away by policies suffer alongside them.
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CONTACT: FEA Press, feapress@floridaea.org, (850) 201-3223
The Florida Education Association is the state’s largest association of professional employees, with 120,000 members. FEA represents PreK-12 teachers, higher education faculty, educational staff professionals, students at our colleges and universities preparing to become teachers and retired education employees.
