It’s 7:30 a.m. and the fifth through eight graders at Academy Prep in midtown St. Petersburg are lined up outside to recite the school pledge. It’s a cool February morning and they’re a little fidgety until Head of School Gina Burkett raises two fingers above her head and all goes quiet. The pledge starts with […]
When Florida first approved its private school tax credit scholarship program in 2001, Florida Education Association attorney Ron Meyer said education groups questioned the legality, but no one really objected to helping low-income students get out of low-performing schools. But then the scholarship program started to grow. Lawmakers approved a law that automatically expanded the […]
A coalition of private schools which accept publicly funded scholarships for students with disabilities says a majority of their members would no longer take the scholarships if they were required to administer the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. In a letter posted on the redefinED blog, the Coalition of McKay Scholarship Schools says their member survey […]
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio has proposed a federal tax credit to help fund private school scholarships. The proposal is similar to a Florida program created in 2001. Florida is one of 11 states with a tax credit scholarship. Here’s how it works. Students are eligible for the program if: Their family household income is no […]
Private schools in Florida are coming together to share their resources in case of a school emergency. Dana Markham is the president of Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale. She says private, independent schools don’t have a support network the way public schools do. Public middle and high schools, for example, share School Resource Officers […]
Earlier this week we gave the full explanation about the Amendment 8 debate in Florida — what the change would and would not do. We know that was a lot to absorb, so we’ve boiled it down to a Cliffs Notes version to sort out the details. 1. What is Amendment 8 and what does […]
Alachua County school board member Eileen Roy has called a proposed constitutional amendment coming before voters in November “the very death of public schools.” The state’s largest teacher’s union is running ads against the change and mobilizing teachers to get out and vote against it. Amendment 8 – dubbed the Religious Freedom Amendment – is […]
The company that turned YouTube into a tutoring service is coming to Florida’s private schools. Step Up For Students, the non-profit that manages Florida’s tax credit scholarship program for low-income students, is partnering with Khan Academy to put its software in 10 Tampa Bay-area private schools. It’s the first time the company has partnered with […]
Two Florida private school have been named National Blue Ribbon school by the U.S. Department of Education. Holy Family Catholic School in Jacksonville and Westlake Christian School in Palm Harbor were among 219 public and 50 private schools given the award nationally. Florida public school winners will be named later. The program recognizes high-performing schools, […]
The Supreme Court ruled today that religious employees of a church, including private, religious schools cannot sue for employee discrimination, according to the AP. In the Michigan case, the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School of Redford, Mich., was sued by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Cheryl Perich, a teacher at the […]
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