Time to Play? Florida House Says Yes, Senate Still No

There was some debate on the senate floor about whether the bill would put schools in competition with each other. Gerald Neal (D-Louisville) attached an amendment which Wilson said was “an unfriendly amendment” deleting large portions of the bill and replacing it with a provision for the Department of Education to assemble a task force for studying the changes made by the same Senate Bill 1 of 2009 and report its conclusions by October 9, 2017.

Senate President Andy Biggs called the House action to include the names of its members in permanent law baffling. “We will never achieve the near perfection in our educational process in Kentucky until we first sit down and make sure we are headed in the right direction”. “What do you say?” So forever enshrined in Title 15 will be 56 state (representatives).

The bill passed the Senate on a vote of 26-23 but not cleanly along party lines.

“If they are not assessed, it seems like to be they get pushed aside and they are not taught…”, he said.

“At some point silly must end, and maturity must take over”, Biggs said.

“In Madison County we have nine elementary schools and all of them have different start and stop times, so that’s how they (meet their needs)”, said Smart. The Senate bill initially called for a unanimous jury recommendation, while the House had proposed a supermajority of only nine jurors. House members approved an amendment Wednesday that included the compromise.

Both chambers introduced identical legislation almost two weeks ago, and the House passed its version early last week.

Alabama and DE are the only other states that require a less than unanimous death penalty vote from a jury, but Republicans pointed out high-profile serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Aileen Wournos didn’t receive unanimous jury recommendations for the death penalty. “The jurisprudence system … is the best system we know”, said House Criminal Justice Chairman Carlos Trujillo, a Miami Republican who sponsored the bill.

Lost in the legislative antics was the urgent intent of the bill to restore almost half the $70 million a year appropriated to the 14 Joint Technical Education Districts.

He said he expects the House will pass the legislation quickly, “once the paperwork comes over” from the Senate.

Sen. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, led the charge to undermine the governor’s budget, getting more than 70 lawmakers to cosponsor legislation to restore the entire $30 million.

Sen. Robin L. Webb, D-Grayson, said she voted against SB 1, in part, because it would allow high school students to use credits from foreign language, voc-tech or computer classes to satisfy course requirements in the arts and humanities.

“It’s the reason we haven’t fixed it in 15 years”, said Litzow, who voted in favor of the plan to address the challenges next year.

“Always I have concluded the death penalty is wrong, because it lowers us all. We’re going to try to raise it and continue to do what we should do”.