Keeping Students and Schools Safe

  • Increase total funds for the Safe Schools Allocation to accommodate growth and expand coverage of safe-school officers.
  • Clarify that Safe Schools Allocation dollars may be used for all safe-school officers including school resource officers, school safety officers, and guardians.
  • Guardian funds – Maintain sufficient funding for sheriffs to continue to train new guardians.
  • Maintain funding for school facility hardening.
  • Increase funding for the Mental Health Assistance Allocation to serve more students and families who need mental health services.
  • Increase funding for community mental health and substance abuse agencies and require that the new revenue identify specific service slots for students in need of services as identified by public school personnel.
  • Maximize the use of Medicaid dollars and other third party funding mechanisms to expand mental health services to students and families.

Sufficient and Sustainable Funds to Meet the Educational Needs of Florida's Public School Students

  • Increase teacher salaries in a meaningful sustainable manner to attract and retain highly effective teachers; and to address a growing teacher shortage.
  • Increase the general operating dollars (Base Student Allocation) to sufficiently fund the costs for school districts including salaries, benefits, mandatory employer contributions to the Florida Retirement System, and increased fixed costs such a utilities and insurance.
  • Have growth pay for itself – Calculate the Required Local Effort (RLE) millage rate to capture increases in residential and commercial property values and revenue gained from new construction and from the change of value in real estate caused by the sale of property.
  • Maintain local control over discretionary millage – Continue to provide Public Education Capital Outlay (PECO) funds for charter schools capital outlay from state PECO revenue, General Revenue, or Lottery Revenue as deemed appropriate by the Legislature.
  • Continue the state’s commitment to funding capital outlay for regular public schools – Continue to provide PECO dollars.
  • Fulfill the funding of existing Special Facilities Projects in rural school districts and fund the projects recommended by the Florida Department of Education.
  • Address the inadequacy of the “cost per student station” as a model for reporting the costs of new construction in Florida’s public schools. School construction is at a standstill until this is resolved.
  • Commission a study of commercial construction costs consistent with the requirements of the state building and fire safety codes for public education facilities and other state requirements for public education.
  • Review the equity and effectiveness of the localized needs assessment process and the Educational Plant Survey requirements, as set forth in s. 1013.31, F.S., and how they should be applied. Specifically, do these processes serve their original purpose given the shift of funding school construction to the Local Discretionary Capital Improvement Millage (1.5) and the many changes to public education in recent years?
  • Expand local control – Extend from 4 years to up to 10 years the voter approved additional millage authorized in s. 1011.73, Florida Statutes.

Support Florida's Public Technical College/Center System

  • Continue to work towards providing additional funding in order to achieve a fully equitable workforce education allocation model for all Technical Colleges/Centers.
  • Appropriate $6.5 million to school district workforce education programs for performance based industry certifications earned by post-secondary students in the 2018-19 school year.
  • Appropriate $3 million to provide grants to career centers, charter technical career centers and colleges to establish new apprenticeship programs and expand existing programs.
  • Include career dual enrolled students in the acceleration calculation for state high school grades, which is currently provided for academic dual enrolled students.