Joanne McCall – Page 2 – SaintPetersBlog

Today on Context Florida: Teacher bonuses, Irish Troubles, TaxWatch recommendations and Kick Butts Day

Published on March 16, 2016 in Apolitical/Top Headlines by Phil Ammann

Today on Context Florida: In Florida, 68,000 teachers carry an evaluation that rates them as “highly effective.” They’re the best of the best. Yet Joanne McCall says only a small percentage of these top teachers qualified for bonuses this year under Florida’s Best and Brightest bonus scheme. But 820 first-year teachers – on the job for only a few months without ever receiving a performance evaluation — each received nearly $8,500 in bonuses. McCall is calling on Gov. Rick Scott to…

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Email Insights: Florida Education Association calls on Gov. Scott to veto bad education budget

Published on March 11, 2016 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Janelle Irwin

As the Florida legislature wrapped up its 2016 session Friday by passing the 2016-17 budget, some education officials are feeling a little left out. In an email, Florida Education Association President Joanne McCall lamented the budget fails to adequately fund education and ignores increasing resistance toward what many see is chronic over-testing in schools. “Legislators may be leaving Tallahassee today, but their work is far from finished. In terms of education, they left our students, our schools and our teachers…

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Today on Context Florida: Antonin Scalia, education improvement, computer coding, volunteerism and John Armstrong & AIDS

Published on February 17, 2016 in Apolitical by Phil Ammann

Today on Context Florida: Mitch McConnell couldn’t even wait until Justice Antonin Scalia’s corpse was cold before exploiting his death for partisan politics, says Martin Dyckman. The oleaginous majority leader means to keep the seat empty, no matter the likelihood of that paralyzing the sharply divided Supreme Court for a year, on the chance that voters might elect a Republican president to appoint Scalia’s replacement. The people, he said, “should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court…

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Florida judge throws out lawsuit against voucher program

Published on May 18, 2015 in Statewide/Top Headlines by Gary Fineout

Backers of Florida’s largest private-school voucher program scored a significant victory Monday in an increasingly bitter legal battle. Circuit Judge George Reynolds tossed out a lawsuit that contended that the program that serves nearly 70,000 students across the state by placing them in private and mostly religious schools is unconstitutional. Reynolds ruled that the groups filing the lawsuit did not have a legal right, or “standing,” to challenge the program. He also ruled that the groups, which included both the…

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