Call for parents to speak on HB1403!

I just watched the session. Good grief.

Parents buying art supplies, a baseball bat, and musical instruments are not "purchasing a horse." How can you take, say, piano lessons without a piano at your home for practice? There are piano schools in my area that will not sign you up without a piano at home. How about taking golf lessons and not having your own clubs? I could go on all day so I'll stop here, but it just shows how incredibly clueless these legislators are about the ins and outs of educating one's own kids. We NEED to have equipment for electives covered, full stop.

Several of the other reps spoke about hearing from parents who are confused about or upset with the changes. Yet they voted yes and didn't ask for an amendment. It seems so basic to strike that one sentence (I think it's one sentence). And that's not even addressing adding digital devices. We all just wanted digital devices added and here they are taking away what was the main reason many of us were interested in this in the first place.

Thank you to Crystal and Brenda (and I saw Jason back there) for speaking out on what we all have been complaining about. I sent off emails to my rep and three of the chairs of these committees this morning, keeping it short as Brenda has suggested. I have a hard time keeping it short, lol, but I liked her suggestion about using bullet points. We still aren't being heard, however, because they are truly out of their element when it comes to homeschooling! I can't imagine how hard it must have been for Brenda in the beginning.

I saw that there was an edit yesterday: it now reads, "Equipment used as instructional materials may only be purchased for subjects in language arts and reading, mathematics, social studies, and science." Would you all understand this to mean that lessons/tutoring in PE and electives are now going to be covered again?

Hi Crystal,

Is there anything local Tallahassee PEP parents can do tomorrow outside of speaking? I'm not sure I can pull that off tomorrow. I've sent an email to the reps!

I can't speak because I'm in south Florida is there any other way I can help ? I work 3pm-11pm