Gina Jordan

The Leon Classroom Teachers Association (LCTA) met with Leon County school leaders this week to resume salary negotiations for the current school year and next year.

Negotiations stalled after Governor Ron DeSantis announced a desire to increase the pay of starting teachers to $47,500.

A series of bills about the foster care system is moving through the Florida Legislature.

Rebekka Behr is focused on the Foster Youth Bill of Rights, which she says will take “all the rights that are already in law and (place) them into one document so that it makes it easier for youth to understand what their rights are as well as those in their case plan.”

It’s important for Behr, who aged out of Florida’s foster care system. She’s now 21-years-old and serves as the fundraising chair for Florida Youth Shine (FYS), a youth-led advocacy group working to improve the child welfare system.

Update: 

Sen. Joe Gruters (R-Sarasota) and Rep. Cord Byrd (R-Jacksonville Beach) have filed compromise bills that would require public employers - not private - to use E-Verify for potential hires.

Original Story: 

Florida lawmakers banned sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants last year. Now, Governor Ron DeSantis wants all employers to use the federal E-Verify system to make sure their workers are legally eligible to work in the United States.

Previous efforts requiring private employers to use E-Verify have failed in Florida, and Republican lawmakers are trying again.

The Tallahassee-based First Amendment Foundation has a new leader. Pamela Marsh took over this month from the retiring Barbara Petersen, who will stick around for a while as a consultant.

Marsh is the former U-S Attorney for the Northern District of Florida. She has more than 20 years of legal experience and is a shareholder at the Ausley McMullen law firm in Tallahassee.

For years, Florida’s Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioners (ARNPs) have tried to convince lawmakers to let them set up offices independent of physicians. Doctor groups have largely opposed the move, but a lawmaker who happens to be an emergency medicine physician isn’t giving up.

Florida’s Office of Financial Regulation (OFR) has been without a commissioner since last spring.  This week, the Florida Cabinet voted to change that with the appointment of Russell Weigel, a securities lawyer from Coral Gables.  One Cabinet member withheld her vote, however, questioning whether the decision was made according to Florida’s open government Sunshine Law.

Governor Ron DeSantis’ proposed state budget would fully fund Florida’s two affordable housing programs. He is recommending that all $387 million be used for housing needs.

The Florida Legislature created the affordable housing programs in 1992 by raising the documentary stamp tax on real estate transactions.

The money is supposed to be split between two programs, but it often gets sent elsewhere.

As an old neighborhood in Tallahassee is being demolished to extend a new road called FAMU Way, some call the changes progress. It’s the latest effort to make improvements to a poor area of the city near the historically black Florida A&M University. Others use the word gentrification, and it’s a move we’ve seen before.

NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast recently celebrated its fourth anniversary, and the radio show is now two years old. We regularly hear the host, Shankar Vedantam, on Morning Edition as NPR's social science correspondent.

Vedantam also wrote the book, The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives.

We recently spoke with him about his work.

For 25 years, Barbara Petersen has served as president of the Tallahassee-based First Amendment Foundation (FAF). She’s been on a continuous quest to keep government dealings in the sunshine and hold lawmakers accountable when they withhold records from the public.

She’s retiring from the job at the end of the year. Her replacement is Pamela Marsh, a former US Attorney in North Florida.

We recently spoke with Petersen about what’s at stake as a new leader is ready to take up the cause.

More evidence of a shift in thinking arose this week among Florida’s Republican leaders when it comes to climate change.

A Senate committee held a panel discussion focused on climate change forecasts and how state agencies should prepare.

Three words that were largely kept under wraps by legislative leadership before the last election quickly emerged during the meeting: sea level rise.

One year after Category 5 Hurricane Michael made landfall near Mexico Beach, children and adults are still struggling with the catastrophe and the changes. Homes and schools were damaged, livelihoods were destroyed, and recovery has been slow.

Michael was Tanner Livingston’s first hurricane. “When they still talk about hurricanes, I’m still afraid of them,” he says during an open house at Deer Point Elementary, where he’s a kindergartner.

The family’s Lynn Haven home in Bay County was damaged, and Tanner recounts in detail what happened after they hid in his mom’s closet.

There’s a vision of a place in Tallahassee where kids and adults with disabilities can learn and work. Plans are underway to make Lifetown a reality, and two fundraisers this month will help.

The Florida Legislature has wrapped up its first week of meetings ahead of the regular session that begins in January. Lawmakers took time during their first Committee Week to consider the causes of mass violence and how mental illness could play a part. Those discussions came amid a request for more mental health funding for schools.

Florida is among the worst states for companies being sued, according to a new Harris Poll.

The 2019 Lawsuit Climate Survey ranks the states on how business executives feel about the fairness of state court systems – and Florida ranks 46th.

The state wants kids to understand the trouble they can get into by making school threats. So, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has launched an awareness campaign called “It’s No Joke.”

Nearly 800 Florida kids were charged with offenses related to school threats in the last fiscal year.

As we come upon the 18th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, many young adults don’t know much about the attacks or how the culture in America changed afterward.

Tallahassee native Christina Ray Stanton has been a resident of New York City for more than 25 years. She recently published a book about her experience on 9/11 and how it transformed her life. 

Full disclosure: The reporter is among Tony's old friends from YAT and Leon High School.

Emmy-winning actor and Tallahassee native Tony Hale (Arrested Development, Veep) is debuting a series on September 6th on Netflix. He stars and executive produces "Archibald’s Next Big Thing," which is based on a children’s book he wrote five years ago.

The story is about a chicken whose insecurities and hopes for the future cause him to miss out on wonderful events happening right in front of him.