June DPECF Newsletter

A Message From DPECF President Laura Tucker

Nationwide success, thank you to all who participated. There are many pictures included by the County. I am glad everyone was safe and had a wonderful experience fighting for our democracy. 

State of Florida 

     On the main budget bill (SB 2500), the Senate approved it unanimously and the House voted 103-2, with only Reps. Dotie Joseph, D-North Miami, and Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, voted against it.      

In summary, the budget bill allows Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office to probe spending by local governments, allows charter school operators to set up shop within an existing public school and to reverse a decision made last year to dedicate funding from the Seminole Gaming Compact to environmental and land conservation programs.      

We will continue to see how it all shakes out for education funding after Governor DeSantis concludes the line veto process. 

Legislative 

We thought we were in the clear, the charter school program called Schools of Hope died during the session. Unfortunately the legislature took up the Schools of Hope bill  SB 2510 in the budget conforming bill negotiated between the chambers. The bill passed along partisan lines, 80-24 in the House and 25-9 in the Senate. 

State Board of Education 

     On 6/4/2025, the State Board of Education (archived taping of meeting). It was announced that Commissioner of Education, Manny Diaz Jr., was appointed as Interim President at the University of West Florida (UWF), making him the front-runner for the permanent position. With that in mind they appointed Anastasios Kamoutsas – known as “Stasi" as Commissioner of Education pending Diaz permanent appointment. From his acceptance speech it appears to me that he is cut from the same cloth as Diaz, therefore expect more of the same until 2028.      

Hillsborough County Public Schools was prominently on the agenda, a command performance and not because it was named the U.S. District of the Year for 2024-2025 by Cambridge International. Superintendent Ayres was asked to provide an update on inappropriate materials available to students in district libraries. After a long discussion of pornagraphy and many difficult questions and stinging comments, the Commissioner of Education and other board members issued warnings to Hillsborough and all school districts. It was said all must comply and remove the inappropriate materials discussed.  If not removed, they are in violation of the law. The Commissioner stated the Attorney General would get involved if compliance of this directive was not heeded. There were choice comments about the school board members who they labeled as “activists” in Hillsborough County. There were threats issued should they not comply or attempt to block the Superintendent from doing his job.      

Many figures were thrown around related to the number of books that needed to be immediately removed permanently from media center shelves, as it stands today there are 55 titles that must be immediately removed. Florida Freedom to Read has done a great summary of the situation and provides the title/author of the 55 books.      

In Hillsborough County, Superintendent Ayres also decided to also remove for purposes of review all of the titles listed in the 22-23 and 23-24 School District Reporting Pursuant to Section 1006.28(2), Florida Statutes lists. This decision has been met with some criticism by local school board members.      

Federal Government and the Department of Education Congress has been working to pass Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. This passed out of the House and is now waiting on the Senate. We have signed on to a letter with the Florida Policy Institute along with many other organizations. 

This letter calls for: 

● Rejecting $723 billion worth of cuts to Medicaid over the next ten years ($16 billion coming from Florida alone) 

● Rejecting $1.6 billion worth of cost-shifts to Florida’s SNAP program in fiscal year 2028 

● Extending enhanced premium marketplace credits that keep the cost of health care low for families in Florida 

  There will be more calls to action sent to you via email but you do not need to wait to send a letter to Senator Ashley Moody and Senator Rick Scott asking them to vote no on the reconciliation bill.     

The Department of Education continues to hedge about the process they will use to provide states with federal education funds. The specifics are still unknown, however, block grant funding appears to be the top runner of the bad ideas that have been floated. 

Chapters in formation 

     Karen Welzel has been working hard with Polk, Northwest (Alachua and other surrounding counties), and Broward County to form chapters. All three of these chapters should be ready to provide their certification paperwork by the deadline of August 1, 2025. Thank you Karen for juggling all the meetings and fantastic support you provide. 

Website-dpecf.org  

     Go to our website and see the new look and feel of the website design. There is a bit of tweaking needed but we are definitely off on the right track. We are also asking everyone to help provide us with up to date photographs for the website. Send these to Dr. Kell Cameron.

You can check out the entire newsletter here:https://mailchi.mp/dpecf/chapter-news-no-kings-day-this-month-in-public-education?e=ec6df8b30a