Staff Reports
In response to Speaker Richard Corcoran’s pledge to increase funding for education, two Democratic ranking members called the statement “encouraging.”
State Rep. Larry Lee Jr. of Port St. Lucie, the ranking member on the Pre-K-12 Appropriations Subcommittee, and state Rep. Shevrin Jones of West Park, ranking member on the Education Committee, issued a statement Monday morning.
“Ensuring every child has access to a quality public education has been neglected for too long when it should always be a top priority of this legislature,” they said. “With Florida’s public education system still struggling to recover from the devastating $1.3 billion in cuts to their budget signed by Gov. Scott in 2011, it is encouraging that Speaker Corcoran has committed to increasing education spending in next year’s budget.
“Now that the Speaker has made this commitment, we are hopeful that our committees will move away from looking at ways to cut education funding and instead begin to focus on giving our hardworking teachers a raise, and increasing per-pupil funding to actually historic levels that take into account inflation.”
Over the weekend, Corcoran was a guest on Jim DeFede‘s Facing South Florida, where the speaker said there will be an increase in funding for public education in the 2017-18 budget.
