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So much for top priorities.
A year after pushing for higher salaries for classroom teachers, Florida's Legislature left Tallahassee last week without paying for a career ladder program intended to keep highly skilled educators in the classroom, where they could pass on their knowledge and techniques to fellow teachers.
Pasco County was one of five districts participating in a pilot program this year and now will scrap its months-old, $7.1-million experiment without knowing whether it is successful. Keep this episode in mind the next time you hear campaign rhetoric about waste in schools and government.
The initiative, by House Speaker Johnnie Byrd and Education Commissioner Jim Horne, called for school districts to set up a career ladder program by August. It required four levels of teacher designations - lead, mentor, associate and professional - and a corresponding compensation package that gave teachers $1,500 to $9,500 extra each year, depending on their skills.
But the estimated statewide price tag of $480-million gave Gov. Jeb Bush and legislators sticker shock this year. Bush submitted a budget plan to the Legislature without funding the program, and both the House and Senate agreed.
Instead, the Legislature extended the deadline to 2005 to comply with the career ladder program. Then legislators said Tuesday they expect the whole program to be repealed. Apparently top priorities, as Byrd labeled this effort a year ago, fall from prominence quickly in Tallahassee.
"The next time Tallahassee comes up with a No. 1 priority, what kind of buy-in will that have with our teachers? None," said Pasco schools superintendent John Long.
It's hard to disagree with that assessment. Abandoning the program at least is preferable to one suggested alternative: requiring districts to cut elsewhere to pay for the career ladder costs. That would have been problematic, particularly in places like Pasco County, where the School Board trimmed more than $10-million from the current budget by closing the Energy and Marine Center, eliminating jobs through attrition and charging higher fees for extracurricular activities.
The outcome is disappointing because the goal was worthwhile. Florida needs to find 160,000 new teachers in the next 10 years, and the career ladder program was designed to attract and retain the best and brightest.
The legislative inaction means the state really wants the best, brightest and - most important - the cheapest.