{"id":70120,"date":"2020-07-01T06:51:10","date_gmt":"2020-07-01T13:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/?p=70120"},"modified":"2022-05-23T07:17:17","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T14:17:17","slug":"florida-education-budget-big-news-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/teacher-resources\/news-center\/florida-education-budget-big-news-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Education Budget &#8211; big news for Teachers!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Governor DeSantis signed the Florida state budget for the Fiscal Year 2020-2021. The budget totals $92.2 billion and includes more than $1 billion in vetoed spending.<\/p>\n<p>After declaring 2020 the <strong>Year of the Teacher<\/strong>, Florida is making historic investments in its K-12 system, despite the unprecedented circumstances Florida is facing due to COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>K-12 education highlights of this budget are provided below:<\/p>\n<p>Key Investments<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$500 million in funding to raise the minimum K-12 teacher salary into the Top 5 nationwide and increase salaries for veteran teachers and other eligible instructional personnel.<\/li>\n<li>$1.3 billion in funding for early childhood education, including more than $412 million for Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK).<\/li>\n<li>K-12 public schools have the highest total and state funding of all time with $22.5 billion in total funding and $12.9 billion in state funding.<\/li>\n<li>This brings K-12 per-student funding to $7,793, which exceeds the current year\u2019s record funding by $137 per students<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>K-12 Public Education<\/p>\n<p>To combat the shortage of teachers entering the career field and elevate the profession to the level it deserves, Governor DeSantis championed and secured $500 million to raise the minimum teacher salary, as well as provide raises for veteran teachers and other instructional personnel. This funding puts Florida in the Top 5 nationwide of average starting teacher salaries. This is a 20-spot jump in one year for the state, which was previously ranked 26th. Florida has the best teachers in the nation, and this was proven again this year when our teachers stepped up and found ways to keep our students learning and engaged when COVID-19 forced school campuses to close.<\/p>\n<p>The budget invests a record $22.5 billion in total funding for the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP). This is a per-student funding amount of $7,793, an increase of $137 per student. The Base Student Allocation grows by $40 per student.<\/p>\n<p>To achieve the $22.5 billion in total funding, the budget includes an additional $392.7 million in state funding and an additional $248.6 million in local funding, of which $158.8 million is generated by new construction only through the required local effort (RLE). In total, the budget includes an increase of $641.4 million in the FEFP.<\/p>\n<p>Highlights of the FEFP increases include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$40 increase in the Base Student Allocation<\/li>\n<li>$25 million, for a total of $100 million for mental health initiatives<\/li>\n<li>$400 million to increase the minimum teacher salary for full-time public classroom teachers and $100 million to raise the salaries of Florida\u2019s veteran teachers and other instructional personnel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>School Safety<\/p>\n<p>The Governor is committed to ensuring Florida\u2019s students and teachers are in a safe and secure learning environment. The budget includes the following school safety initiatives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$180 million for the safe schools component of the FEFP.<\/li>\n<li>$500,000 in recurring funding to provide stipends of $500 to school guardians who participate in the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program.<\/li>\n<li>$5.5 million in recurring funding to continue the Youth Mental Health Awareness and Assistance Training.<\/li>\n<li>$640,000 in recurring funding for the Florida Safe Schools Assessment Tool. The tool is used to assist school officials with identifying threats, vulnerabilities, and appropriate safety controls.<\/li>\n<li>$3 million in recurring funding to continue providing a centralized integrated data repository and data analytics resources to improve access to timely, complete and accurate information integrating data from social media; the Department of Children and Families; the Department of Law Enforcement; the Department of Juvenile Justice; and local law enforcement.<\/li>\n<li>$8 million in new funding for school districts to implement a mobile panic alert system that is capable of connecting multiple first responder agencies.<\/li>\n<li>$42 million in school hardening grants.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Promoting Computer Science<\/p>\n<p>The budget maintains $10 million to certify teachers to teach computer science courses, and to provide bonuses to teachers who hold educator certificates or industry certifications in computer science.<\/p>\n<p>Workforce Initiatives<\/p>\n<p>The budget maintains $10 million for the Governor\u2019s Pathways to Career Opportunities Grant Program to establish or expand pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs for high school and college students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Governor DeSantis signed the Florida state budget for the Fiscal Year 2020-2021. The budget totals $92.2 billion and includes more than $1 billion in vetoed spending. After declaring 2020 &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":65525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1831,1833,1832],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"\/media-fl\/Teachers-wanted.jpg","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-05-09 05:33:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70122,"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70120\/revisions\/70122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teachersoftomorrow.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}