{"id":13591,"date":"2012-09-26T13:05:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T17:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=13591"},"modified":"2012-09-26T13:05:05","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T17:05:05","slug":"gov-rick-scott-and-florida-teachers-union-president-meet-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/09\/26\/gov-rick-scott-and-florida-teachers-union-president-meet-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Rick Scott And Florida Teacher’s Union President Meet Again"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

NEA Public Relations\/flickr<\/p>

FEA President Andy Ford<\/p><\/div>\n

Staying true to his word, Gov. Rick Scott will sit down again this afternoon with Florida Education Association President Andy Ford.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll meet in the Governor\u2019s Office at the Capitol to talk education policy.<\/p>\n

“This needs to be the beginning of a long series of meetings that examines the direction we\u2019re going with public schools and the education of our children in this state,” FEA spokesman Mark Pudlow said.<\/p>\n

“For more than a decade, there have been massive and constant changes to our neighborhood public schools \u2013 largely without the input of teachers, parents or administrators. What has been done to our public schools can\u2019t be fixed in a single meeting.”<\/p>\n

This meeting follows a dinner earlier this month at the Governor\u2019s Mansion. Scott hosted Ford and a handful of other education leaders as part of his week-long \u201clistening tour\u201d<\/a> of Florida school districts.<\/p>\n

After the dinner, Ford said he was surprised to realize that he and the governor \u201cdon\u2019t disagree that much\u201d on general principles. He said, \u201cWho can argue with the fact that every kid ought to have a great education?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The state teacher’s union has generally not seen eye to eye with Scott or Florida\u2019s Republican controlled Legislature. The party in power wants more independently run charter schools and access to private school vouchers for students who attend failing public schools.<\/p>\n

Ford thinks those are questionable uses of taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n

As he told StateImpact Florida last week<\/a>, \u201cThese schools would not necessarily give the FCAT. We would not know how their students are scoring; whether they really are teaching the courses that they\u2019re supposed to be teaching and whether their teachers are certified or\u00a0not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The parent advocacy group Fund Education Now<\/a> remains skeptical of Scott\u2019s motives. The group\u2019s Kathleen Oropeza sent an email blast to subscribers criticizing Scott\u2019s \u201c<\/strong>budget signing road show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernor Scott made a lot of promises last week.,” she said. “He said he wanted to invest more money in public education.\u00a0 As parents and voters, we must make sure political promises made during publicity tours match the specific actions of the man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ford seems ready to listen.<\/p>\n

Following his dinner with the governor, Ford told reporters that \u201conly through open dialogue are we going to be able to move forward here and try to make sure that we keep the Florida public school system moving in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Staying true to his word, Gov. Rick Scott will sit down again this afternoon with Florida Education Association President Andy Ford. They\u2019ll meet in the Governor\u2019s Office at the Capitol to talk education policy. “This needs to be the beginning of a long series of meetings that examines the direction we\u2019re going with public schools […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[699,672,1027],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13599,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13591\/revisions\/13599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}