A highlight?
We all know accentuating the positive is the way the PR game is played (or cherry picking the negative, if you're on the other side of things – and you know who you are). But we can't help but humbly ask, after seeing yesterday's press releases (click here and here), if the governor's office and the Department of Education didn't go overboard by describing what just happened to the bonus program for national board certified teachers as a "highlight" in this year's budget.
As the St. Petersburg Times wrote in this story today, Gov. Crist signed a bill this week that caps the bonus at 10 years; eliminates funding for a related mentoring bonus; reclassifies the award as a "bonus" for retirement calculations; and scraps the state subsidy that paid 90 percent of the $2,500 application fee for other teachers who want to get board certified.
Crist himself called changes to the program "disappointing." So can it still be a highlight? Maybe, given all the budget cutting going on, it's a highlight that the program wasn't zapped altogether?
- Ron Matus, state education reporter
Get inside the world of Florida education with St. Petersburg Times staff writer Jeffrey S. Solochek and the rest of the Times education reporting team. We'll bring you up-to-date information about the latest education trends, fads and news and dig deep into Tampa Bay area school issues.
Just another example of the State of Florida's enthusiast encouragement of educational excellence! Let's face it: Administrators, teachers, and students are being beat down at every opportunity!
Posted by: Louise | June 13, 2008 at 09:02 AM
Will the 4% holdback include what was left in the Excellent Teacher Program? If so, the wonderful "talking points" from Wednesday were already a bold faced lie by Thursday. Would the People's Governor and the People's House both lie to the citizens so blatently? Shocking!
They count on the citizens failing to remember all of this in November, but I will remember all of the "good" work that they did when they: made my taxes drop like a rock; made my property insurance rates drop like a rock; started the largest government insurance company in the world funded by my tax dollars (and the promise of future taxes if anything ever goes wrong); and when they destoyed the public schools that I count on to serve my children. I will remember.
Posted by: | June 14, 2008 at 03:56 PM