Washington and Lincoln will soon be watching over Florida students as they practice their cursive, thanks to a bill signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis late Monday evening.
A wide-ranging education bill (SB 182) includes provisions requiring students to learn cursive writing and for school districts to post pictures of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln at a “conspicuous place” in each public school.
The bill takes effect July 1.
Cursive writing was previously required in Florida schools, but it was dropped in 2010 when the state adopted Common Core standards. The DOE reinstated it as a requirement in 2014 as an agency rule, but the new bill will cement the cursive standard in law.
Starting in third grade, students will learn to read and write in cursive and must be proficient by the fifth grade.
Other pieces of the measure establish the School Teacher Training and Mentoring Program within the Florida Department of Education, and make multiple changes to private and public schools, and add instruction requirements.
Bill sponsor Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, said those changes were made at the “ninth hour.”
“While the bill changed significantly from the original intent of the bill … we compromised with some other educational policies attached to the bill that we could live with that would not do harm to our children and our public school system,” Jones said.
The teacher training program places retired teachers as mentors in schools rated “D” or “F.”
Mentors will receive a stipend of up to $3,000 and be paired with new classroom teachers; teachers who are rated as “needs improvement,” “developing,” or “unsatisfactory” in their performance reviews; and teachers struggling with behavior management within the classroom.
“The purpose of the program is to increase the effectiveness and involvement of classroom teachers and improve student achievement, classroom management, and excellence in the state’s public schools,” the bill states.
Another provision in the bill waives some zoning rules for “micro schools” – private schools with 150 or fewer students.
The bill also bars struggling charter schools from dismissing a student due to academic performance while the school is implementing an improvement or corrective action plan.
One major question hanging over the bill: How will it be implemented?
Under the bill, the DOE will select the portraits of Washington and Lincoln and make them available to the school districts. But the provision is “subject to legislative appropriation,” and the House and Senate are engaged in a standoff over the budget, making it uncertain whether the DOE or the districts will have the funds to put the pictures in place next year.
The teacher training program, too, will rely on budget decisions by lawmakers. The bill allows school districts to use funds from a segment of the Florida Education Finance Program, the main funding formula for K-12 schools, to pay for the training program, but that will need to be agreed to by the House and Senate as well.
Budget talks have stalled, and next week, lawmakers are poised to return to the Capitol for congressional redistricting, artificial intelligence regulations, and vaccine law changes, but negotiations on the state spending plan aren’t on the agenda.