As Senate and House lawmakers craft a 2022-23 state budget, the two legislative chambers are currently not aligned on funds regarding public education.
And one of the funding issue reignites a debate about masks in school.
On Wednesday, the state House approved penalizing certain school districts that didn’t follow the DeSantis administration on mask mandates.
The Senate didn’t include that issue in their state budget priorities.
That means the two sides will have negotiate on the issue before the end of the annual legislative session in mid-March.
State Rep. Randy Fine, who is the chair of the House Appropriation Subcommittee on Education, proposed the idea of penalizing certain school districts, while rewarding others. Fine is a Republican who represents part of Brevard County.
The House budget would pull millions from 12 school districts that implemented strict mask mandates at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which state education officials believed broke Florida law. The other 55 districts would get funds.
Fine said last Friday: “We had a big issue with that this year, where a number of school districts broke the law. But 55 of them did not. So we created an allocation of $200 million dollars for those 55 school districts… to reward them for the decisions that they made.”
The budget item is called the “Putting Parents First Adjustment,” and Fine said at the time that the proposal is not penalizing districts, but “holding people accountable.”
On Wednesday, at the...
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