Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill to provide for the decertification of partisan teacher unions while speaking during a press conference at Fort Myers High School this week.
"You should not have these entities operating if they do not have support from the people they purport to represent," DeSantis said.
The bill (SB 1296) also implements a fast-track process for teacher salary increases. Sen. Jonathan Martin (R-Fort Myers) sponsored the bill in the Senate.
Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka (R-Fort Myers) sponsored a similar bill in the House.
"That money goes straight to the teachers without being blocked by any of these school unions," DeSantis added.
Gov. DeSantis also signed a bill (HB 1279) allowing school districts to provide pay incentives to high-performing teachers to teach in lower-performing schools without being inhibited by collective bargaining. The bill, in part, was supplemented by the Florida Legislature's passage of Florida Advanced Courses, which greenlit college-level high school courses as an alternative to Advanced Placement courses.
Moreover, HB 1279 offers teachers bonuses for teaching Florida Advanced Courses, similar to AP Placement Courses.
"This puts Florida's Advanced Courses on equal footing and supports our goal for finding more high-quality acceleration pathways for students," DeSantis said.
The bill also boosts parental rights in special education by notifying them if services in their child's education plan are not delivered as expected. Parents can also request service provider logs and information to allow transparency and accountability in the services given to students in school.
Rep. Jennifer Kincart Jonsson (R-Lakeland) sponsored the bill in the House. The Senate filed multiple comparable bills.
"These reforms are really significant. They are the right thing to do. It's not easy to do, take a lot of political arrows while you're doing it... that means less power for some of these groups that have a lot of power for a lot of time, have gotten a lot of resources directed their way because of the way the system has been constructed in the past," DeSantis said. "Now that power is flowing more readily to parents and students where it should be."
Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios “Stasi” Kamoutsas and several Florida officials joined Gov. DeSantis at the press conference.
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