Senate unanimously approves guardrails for teachers under criminal cloud

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

Republican Sen. Clay Yarborough’s legislation (SB 1374) requires more detailed reporting on teachers accused of crimes effective July 1, 2025.

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. Teachers 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, Yarborough 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.

A House companion bill is on the Second Reading Calendar.