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Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: Students Stand Their Ground, Testing Students

Florida may not be gripped by a royal baby watch, but the Sunshine State continues to be on the minds of many summertime-sweltering Americans, or at least those watching cable news and unable to distance themselves from social media.

Florida found itself before America’s TV eye for another week, as reaction continued to swirl after a jury in Sanford acquitted George Zimmerman in last year’s shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager from Miami Gardens.

Meanwhile, Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary David Wilkins left the agency to “pursue opportunities in the private sector,” after DCF faced growing criticism about the deaths of four children who earlier had come to its attention.

And that was not all the fodder during a normally slow-paced period in Tallahassee.

A divided state Board of Education, after a debate about the validity of grades issued annually to schools, approved a plan that will shield schools from steep drops this year. At the same time, legislative leaders want the state to come up with a “Florida Plan” for educational testing.

Oh, and it was announced Thursday that Florida’s unemployment rate held at 7.1 percent in June.

STUDENTS STANDING THEIR GROUND

After three days on the road in New York, Pensacola, Tampa and Bradenton, Gov. Rick Scott flew back to Tallahassee on Thursday to meet with student protesters seeking to overturn the 2005 “stand your ground” law.

But the protesters, led by a group called the Dream Defenders, didn’t like that Scott refused to budge in his support for the law. So they remained camped outside Scott’s first floor office on Friday, their fourth day on the stone floor, equipped with pillows and blankets in preparation for a weekend inside the Capitol.

While Zimmerman didn’t invoke “stand your ground” in declaring he acted in self-defense when shooting Martin, the law has been heavily debated during the racially charged case.

“So you’re telling me — again — that people who look like me, we don’t matter,” said Shamile Louis, 21, a student at the University of Florida who came from Gainesville to participate. “Our bodies don’t matter. We can lie in the street and be dead and it’s cool. I had a friend killed about a month ago in Orlando. Still no arrest. Still no nothing. Another black man gone. Another young black boy without a father.”

Democratic lawmakers across the state have offered support for the students’ sit-in. Meanwhile, legendary musician Stevie Wonder and liberal groups such as Moveon have called for boycotts of Florida tourism and orange juice.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder strongly criticized the “stand your ground” law Tuesday while addressing an NAACP convention in Orlando, and President Barack Obama chimed in Friday.

“You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son,” Obama said. “Another way of saying that is, Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago.”

Scott maintains there is no reason to call the Legislature to Tallahassee for a special session on the law.

“I told them that I agree with the Task Force on Citizen Safety and Protection, which concurred with the law,” Scott said in a release after the meeting, referring to a task force formed after the shooting. The Republican-controlled Legislature did not take action this year on proposals to change the law.

WHO IS WATCHING THE DCF?

The Department of Children and Families is in flux.

Esther Jacobo, the managing director for DCF’s southern region, was named interim secretary after Wilkins, Scott’s longest-serving agency head, stepped down Thursday.

Wilkins struggled to implement a new child protection initiative that he said would “transform” DCF. But the criticism of his handling of the agency steadily grew starting May 16, when the first of the four children died. All four had had contact with DCF abuse investigators before their deaths, and critics contended the deaths could have been prevented.

Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood and chairwoman of the Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee, was preparing to hold a hearing on the children’s’ deaths and what she called the “turmoil” at DCF.

Wilkins didn’t aid his own cause as he clashed with people running the state’s 19 community-based care organizations, which deliver local child-welfare services.

Wilkins wanted to add terms to the agencies’ contracts that would give him more control — including the right to name their chief executive officers and other top staff.

Instead, the agencies fought back, recruiting lawmakers to try to rewrite part of state law that created the community-based care system, which was designed to shift many child-welfare duties from the state to local non-profit organizations

TESTING THE FLORIDA WAY

Senate President Don Gaetz and House Speaker Will Weatherford announced they want the state to withdraw from a multi-state educational consortium that has been developing new tests for students, saying they want a “Florida Plan.”

Gaetz and Weatherford would replace the work from the consortium known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, which is developing tests that are part of the national move to “Common Core Standards.”

To the lawmakers, too many questions remain unanswered about issues such as implementation, administration, technology readiness, timeliness and costs.

The introduction of the Gaetz-Weatherford idea came after the state Board of Education narrowly approved a proposal by Education Commissioner Tony Bennett that will prevent schools from dropping more than one letter grade on their annual report cards.

The brace was proposed because school superintendents said they were concerned that this year’s grades could plummet for many schools. The superintendents pointed to repeated changes in the state’s school-accountability system — 13 this year alone — which they say have made it harder to meet standards and have created uncertainty.

Bennett said the change wasn’t a lessening of standards, but part of the transition to the Common Core Standards that are scheduled to take effect during the 2014-15 school year.

“I will hold fast that this should not be permanent and cannot be part of the permanent accountability landscape,” Bennett said.

Board member Sally Bradshaw, who opposed putting a limit on how far school grades could drop, argued the move will disguise what is happening in schools.

“Why are we going to mislead parents and the public on how their schools are doing?” asked Bradshaw.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Protesters camped out in the Capitol after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The protesters want a special legislative session on the “stand your ground” law, but Gov. Rick Scott does not plan to call such a session.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “If we got Chronic Wasting Disease in the state of Florida, I’d never eat another piece of venison.” – Marion Hammer, of the National Rifle Association, in support of a proposed ban on importing deer from out of state because of concerns about the spread of a disease can be fatal to the animals.