Crackdown on teachers with criminal issues clears final Senate committee

The full Senate is poised to consider legislation that would impose reporting requirements and mandate the removal of teachers accused of a wide variety of crimes detailed in Florida Statutes.

The Rules Committee advanced Sen. Clay Yarborough’s legislation (SB 1374) requiring more detailed reporting on teachers accused of crimes effective July 1, 2025.

“We’re all committed to student safety and that’s what this bill is about,” Yarborough said.

Teachers and administrators would be required to self-report the accusations within 48 hours of arrest, and would also be compelled to report convictions and rulings for any offense except a minor traffic violation in the same time frame.

Districts would have to remove the teachers from classrooms within 24 hours of the notification. They would be suspended with pay and reassigned to duties where they don’t interact with students, with a disciplinary hearing required within a year of the removal from the classroom.

Yarborough was inspired to file this bill by a series of incidents in his native Jacksonville, where the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts had a number of teachers who flouted laws and community standards.

In a letter last year to Acting Superintendent Dana Kriznar, the School Board and Jacksonville General Counsel Michael Fackler, he expressed “serious concerns about the immediate safety” of students at Douglas Anderson in the wake of an arrest of a teacher over a “sexual incident” covered in the local press.

“The fact that the district was aware of this and allowed the teacher to remain in direct proximity with students and chose not to inform parents until last week is beyond comprehension,” Yarborough wrote.

This legislative proposal is an attempt to get state guardrails on a situation neglected by locals.

The bill notes that the “self-report is not considered an admission of guilt and is not admissible for any purpose in any proceeding, civil or criminal, administrative or judicial, investigatory or adjudicatory.”

A House companion bill has one committee stop to go before it hits the floor.