Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Governor Ron DeSantis has proposed a $1,000 bonus as a token of appreciation for educators who responded positively to his call last fall for the reopening of schools and returned to in-person classes.
The $1,000 bonuses, which amounts to $216 million and that DeSantis wants to come from the federal COVID-19 funds, would go to public school teachers and principals who returned to in-person classes last August.
The governor is reported saying that educators who made the reopening of schools and in-class learning possible last year deserved to be rewarded monetarily.
If lawmakers were to approve the $1,000 bonuses, it would benefit about 3,600 principals and 180,000 K-12 teachers in public schools across the state. And it would come from part of the Education Stabilization Fund in the federal CARES Act passed last year.
The $1,000 bonuses is in addition to the $3,000 bonuses that DeSantis is pushing lawmakers to pass in the current session for teachers who have completed civics training. This proposal is estimated will cost $106 million, with the money also to come from last year’s federal CARES Act.
In related news relative to the governor’s push to return to brick-and-mortar schooling, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said that for the 2021-2022 school year, the state will cease funding online programs that districts have put in place to accommodate students who do not want to attend in-person classes because of the pandemic.
Prior to the pandemic, online options didn’t receive as high per-student funding from the state as did traditional brick-and-mortar schools, since the former did not require campuses.
With the pandemic, however, the state began treating the “innovative” online programs that the district created the same as their brick-and-mortar counterparts in terms of per-pupil funding. Per Corcoran’s announcement, the funding for online programs will revert to pre-pandemic levels next school year.
It’s reported that statewide, about 30 percent of Florida’s nearly 2.8 million public school students are learning via remote online programs, not including the Florida Virtual School.