Alex Rizo targets education reform, optometrist allowances, helping Maury Hernandez

Hialeah Republican Rep. Alex Rizo, Chair of the Miami-Dade GOP, correctly predicted a red wave in the county. Image via Florida House.

Heading into his third House term, Hialeah Rep. Alex Rizo is sticking with his go-to subject: education.

The former teacher and public schools administrator-turned education consultant has a few bills planned for the 2025 Session focused on instructor recruitment, training and student funding.

He is also drawing up measures to expand optometrist services, provide foster youths more autonomy once they become adults and rerunning a claims bill that would make a ex-Broward Sheriff’s deputy financially whole.

“I’m always doing something in education. It’s really close to my heart,” he said. “And last year, I was able to carry two of the three education deregulation bills.”

Those measures, among other things, overhauled requirements for teacher training, governance issues and student promotion requirements, and waived tuition and fees for students who quit high school but pursue vocational diplomas or workforce credentials.

Rizo now has three more education-focused measures in the works.

One centers on a persistent problem for large school districts in the state: teacher recruitment and retention.

Teachers have to go through a certification process that can sometimes be duplicative, depending on the prospective educator’s focus. Rizo wants to eliminate those overlaps.

“I think there’s a way we can streamline it, make it more efficient,” he said.

Another to-be-filed bill would “bolster reading requirements” for teachers in training during their undergraduate work. The goal, he said, would be to make the curriculum be less general and more subject-specific earlier in an educator’s studies.

“For the last 30 years, we have really put a high price on assessment and reading scores, and the state every year spends hundreds of millions of dollars — if not billions of dollars — in remediation reading,” he said. “Maybe instead of treating the patient better, we treat the doctor better, with the doctor in this case being the teacher. Can we train the teacher a lot better when it comes to their literacy, not just reading, in their undergraduate studies in elementary education, for instance? That’s the idea.”

Rizo admitted the third education bill he’s devising is “nowhere near complete.” It centers on reformulating the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), which determines how much funding each school district receives annually based on student counts and various cost factors.

Legislation state lawmakers passed in recent years, including a sweeping expansion to Florida’s school voucher program in 2023, changed the FEFP’s formula. Where before the change, the state’s most populous county (Miami-Dade) was at or near the top in funding, Rizo said, it’s now at the bottom.

“I’d like to look at that, because I certainly don’t think that’s equitable,” he said, adding that including a “cost-of-living index” to the FEFP formula might rectify the issue.

Outside the classroom, Rizo is again diving into the so-called “eyeball wars” through legislation that would grant more allowances to optometrists.

The pending measure is a “very minor expansion of their scope of practice,” he said, and would permit licensed optometrists to write additional prescriptions and conduct one additional emergency procedure and therapeutic procedure that utilizes laser technology.

“What exactly this bill does (is make it so) you don’t have to go to an ophthalmologist, necessarily, if there’s a condition that calls for this particular procedure or pain medication,” he said. “No surgery, nothing like that. It’s basically an advanced first-aid procedure to release inter-corneal pressure.”

Rizo carried a similar bill in 2021, but it and its Senate analogue by then-Sen. Manny Díaz Jr. of Hialeah Gardens, a fellow Republican education professional, died before reaching a floor vote.

Last year, Rizo voted against another bill that aimed to ban anyone except osteopathic physicians and medical doctors — which ophthalmologists are, but optometrists aren’t — from calling themselves “physicians” in ads and patient interactions.

Lawmakers passed the measure in May 2023, but DeSantis vetoed it the following month, ending the latest skirmish between the two associated professions.

Rizo also wants to help Maury Hernandez, a former deputy with the Broward Sheriff’s Office who suffered life-threatening, permanently debilitating injuries in a preventable shooting more than 16 years ago.

The lawmaker has repeatedly sponsored a House claims bill — legislation that approves the payment of monetary damages beyond what’s allowable under Florida’s sovereign immunity laws, which protect government agencies from costly lawsuits — to clear payment to Hernandez.

None succeeded.

Hernandez was on his way to work on Aug. 6, 2007, when he witnessed a motorcycle run through three red lights on Pembroke Road. He pursued and pulled over the motorist, who shot Hernandez in the head.

The shooter should have never been on the street, but his parole officer failed to report dozens of probation violations.

Hernandez endured painful rehabilitation and still suffers from partial paralysis that prevented him from returning to work. He sued the Department of Corrections, but the case was dismissed in a ruling that found the Department “owed no duty of care” to him.

In the years since, lawmakers have championed Hernandez’s cause through claims bills seeking $10 million from the state. Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony, former Sheriffs Scott Israel, Ken Jenne and Al Lambert, and the Florida Police Benevolent Association have supported him.

Next year, Rizo hopes to finally deliver for Hernandez through a retooled measure seeking a smaller settlement sum.

“We’re changing the amount that’s going to be requested,” he said. “But I’ve committed to filing this bill every year that I can until we get it done, because he deserves it.”

Rizo this week forwent seeking re-election as Chair of the Miami-Dade GOP, explaining that demands he faced in the Legislature wouldn’t afford him enough time to lead his county party.

On Tuesday, the party elected its then-Vice Chair, Kevin Cooper, to succeed Rizo as leader.

The 2024 Legislative Session commences Jan. 9 and runs through March 8.