FEA: HB 7069 another bad school law

Florida Education Association (FEA) President Joanne McCall expressed her disappointment today that Gov. Rick Scott signed House Bill 7069 into law, saying that it’s the latest in a line of bad legislation designed to undermine Florida’s public schools.

“The implementation of HB 7069 will do harm to our schools and to our most vulnerable students,” McCall said. “Blindly jumping into this so-called ‘fundamental transformation’ of how we educate our children is based almost entirely on ideology. At best this is malpractice. This is no way to build a high quality public education system.”

McCall said that parents and teachers deserve better than HB 7069 and that they know that our schools need more funding to serve the needs of the state’s 2.8 million public school students.

“Our schools need to be able to meet the needs of our students,” McCall said. “That isn’t done with massive giveaways to charter schools while school districts try to scrape by to make ends meet.”

McCall noted that parents, teachers and others from throughout the state opposed HB 7069.

“It’s time for our elected leaders to begin to listen to parents, teachers and education staff professionals. They need to strengthen our neighborhood public schools, not work to undermine them,” McCall said. “We’ll be back to undo the worst of the provisions of HB 7069 and to work to build stronger public schools.”