April 9, 2010 Contact: Mark Pudlow, 850.201.3223 or 850.508.9756
FEA: Legislature fails students, teachers and public schools with awful legislation
TALLAHASSEE — The passage by the House this morning of HB 7189 drew harsh criticism from the president of the Florida Education Association.
“It’s difficult to imagine any legislation that will be worse for our public schools than this bill,” said FEA President Andy Ford. “This bill is anti-student, anti-teacher, anti-parent, and anti-public schools. This bill guts local control of our public schools, vastly expands testing, bases all school and personnel decisions on a score from tests that have not been developed or validated.”
Ford said that because so much of the bill is yet undetermined, it asks the entire education community to trust the Florida Department of Education.
“We don’t trust the DOE,” Ford said. “Over the past dozen years they’ve given us plenty of reason not to trust them. Rather than collaborate with FEA and others in the education community to initiate reforms, the DOE and the political leadership in Tallahassee have decided to use a steamroller to flatten anyone who does not fully buy into their ‘reform’ agenda.”
Ford said FEA would continue to urge its members and the public to contact Gov. Charlie Crist and encourage him to veto this bill. Ford noted that an FEA commissioned public opinion poll found that even likely Republican voters did not approve of this legislation by a wide margin.
“The governor needs to listen to the people of Florida and veto this bad piece of legislation,” Ford said.
Ford was also critical of legislation passed Thursday that sends a constitutional amendment to the November ballot that would weaken the class size provisions that voters placed in the Constitution eight years ago.
“The voters have spoken on class size,” Ford said. “They want smaller class size and they want more funding in our public schools. They made their intentions clear, but the political establishment in Tallahassee didn’t like their answer. We hope they will send this message louder and clearer at the polls in November.”