The Florida Citizens Alliance Podcast

Rick and Keith are joined by Steve Vernon, an FLCA board member, to catch up on some of the bills in Tallahassee. The first is HJR 157 which is about term limits for school board members. Next, they discuss HB 265 regarding parental consent for abortion. Also, HB 341 which talks about the study of the Bible and Religion. These are very tough and controversial bills but what exactly are the details and how good a chance do they have of passing?

Follow These Bills

HJR 157

HB 265

HB 341

Rick welcomes Florida State Representative Bob Rommel to the podcast to talk about the Electoral College. There has been a discussion as of late to have a National Popular Vote to control the Presidential election. Is it a fair process? What would the founders think? They go into great detail about this debate and what Florida is doing to shore up election integrity on today's episode.

Learn more about Bob Rommel

Florida Citizens Alliance

From Archives.Gov:

"The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.

The Electoral College process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators. Read more about the allocation of electoral votes.

Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated 3 electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. For this reason, in the following discussion, the word “state” also refers to the District of Columbia.

Each candidate running for President in your state has his or her own group of electors. The electors are generally chosen by the candidate’s political party, but state laws vary on how the electors are selected and what their responsibilities are. Read more about the qualifications of the Electors and restrictions on who the Electors may vote for.

The presidential election is held every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. You help choose your state’s electors when you vote for President because when you vote for your candidate you are actually voting for your candidate’s electors."

It seems like many people talk about Standard Reform in our schools, but have a hard time understanding the details. Rick welcomes Ted Rebarber to the podcast. He is the CEO of AccountabilityWorks. They discuss how well-designed accountability and assessment systems are vital to raising student achievement and ensuring that all students receive the benefit of a high-quality education. What can standards reform really accomplish? What can we hope for with true reform? Learn how Common Core has truly affected our students and what we can do to remedy the situation on today's episode.

AccountabilityWorks

Theodor Rebarber, CEO [email protected] Theodor Rebarber is CEO and founder of AccountabilityWorks. Before that, he was co-founder and chief education officer of a charter school management company that achieved high test score gains with disadvantaged students. Previously, Rebarber developed and passed standards and charter schools legislation as a legislative director in Congress, managed test development at a system of privately-managed public schools, developed policy on standards-based reform at the U.S. Department of Education, and researched education policy at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies (VIPPS).

Things are beginning to accelerate leading into the 2020 Legislative Session! Rick and Keith have 29 meetings in Tallahassee working for you! They talk about 5 important issues facing teachers and parents, including the Governors' teacher pay raise, The Hope Scholarship, Novel content in school media centers, the DOE listening tours, and the AIR assessment on Common Core. Find out more about these critical issues and how YOU can help FLCA today on today's episode!

Florida Standards Listening Tour

Florida Standards Review Info

The Hope Scholarship

This is a topic that Rick and Keith are incredibly passionate about. It's The Hope Scholarship. We all want the best learning experience for our children, but what if they are being harassed or bullied? More than 50,000 students are subject to what we call bullying! Beginning with the 2018-2019 school year, a student enrolled in a Florida public school in kindergarten through grade 12 who has been subjected to an incident of battery; harassment; hazing; bullying; kidnapping; physical attack; robbery; sexual offenses, harassment, assault, or battery; threat or intimidation; or fighting at school the opportunity to transfer to another public school with capacity or enroll in an approved private school under the Hope Scholarship. Find out what steps you need to take on today's episode.

The Hope Scholarship

Hector Manley sex abuse case, Collier schools' response angers parents

From the article:

Parents interviewed had little to no knowledge of the Manley case; a few had heard about it, and only from media coverage.

“It’s not right,” Raina Antonio-Jose said in Spanish as she walked her child home from school last spring. “They should have informed the parents so that we are aware of what is going on with our kids at the school.”

Antonio-Jose heard about Manley’s arrest on a Facebook post linking to an article about him.

“The school did not tell me anything,” Antonio-Jose said.

Parents at Parkside Elementary School say they feel in the dark because of the lack of communication from the school district about a sexual abuse case.