PANAMA CITY — Bay County residents and representatives of a wide range of organizations lobbied Thursday night at the local legislative delegation meeting for their causes and concerns in the upcoming session.
The speakers urged legislators to support a wide range of causes, from opposing fracking to banning e-cigarettes to providing state incentives to help bring in films to Bay County.
State Rep. Brad Drake, R-DeFuniak Springs, State Rep. Jay Trumbull, R-Panama City, and Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, listened to their concerns at the Bay County Government Center.
Several teachers and school administrators who complained about Florida’s testing system and assessment process for teachers.
“My point is the testing madness, and it’s all computer-based with very few exceptions,” Mosley High School Principal Sandy Harrison said.
Rutherford High School Principal Lennis Coy Pilson said his school is losing teachers because of the new requirements. He said he recently lost three teachers who said they can’t take it anymore.
“Take into consideration all the stresses teacher are under,” he said.
After the meeting, Gaetz said he listened to the teachers’ concerns.
“I didn’t hear anybody say that they were opposed to measuring student performance or frequent and valid testing,” he said. “But instead, I think we had some very legitimate concerns by teachers and administrators saying, ‘Hey let’s have consistency. Let’s make sure that whatever the measurements of student performance are, that they are consistent from school to school and from county to county and from year to year, and let’s make sure they are understandable.’ My rule is: If you can’t explain it in a PTO meeting in 15 or 20 minutes, it’s probably an education policy that isn’t going to work.”
State Attorney Glenn Hess said his office doesn’t have the staff or other resources to store data for three years, as required by public records law if a proposed bill passes
He said the videos will be public record and will be requested by defendants.
“We do not have the attorneys. We do not have the staff to do this,” Hess said.
Doug Kent, director of the Bay County Health Department, urged the legislators to continue to support programs the state is funding that are working, such as one designed to identify and treat people with diabetes or pre-diabetes. He said it is helping many residents.
He said there were 4,000 tests taken for blood sugar last year.
“We have discovered it is the most preventable disease in our county,” said Kent, who added that 55,000 Bay County residents are either pre-diabetic or diabetic.
Brook Bullard, development coordinator for the Anchorage Children’s Home, encouraged legislators to fund $50,000 to help fund a teen homelessness program.
“We’re not asking the state to fully fund the program,” Bullard said. “We have skin in the game.”