Isadora Rangel has an opinion piece in the Florida Today concerning pay for teachers and the plan by Governor DeSantis to increase starting teacher pay to $47,500.
It takes a Brevard County public school teacher 16 years to make roughly $47,500 a year. That’s also the starting salary Gov. Ron DeSantis wants for teachers statewide, regardless of experience.
On the surface, the idea of helping teachers skip those 16 years sounds enticing. It’s also a great slogan for DeSantis because, if passed by the Legislature, his plan would make Florida the No. 2 state in the nation for starting teacher pay.
What DeSantis is trying to do is unprecedented. After eight years of embarrassing education funding under former Gov. Rick Scott, it’s refreshing to see a conservative governor who gets the correlation between teacher pay and a good education system.
Emily James, was a senior banker at a U.S. Bank call center in Portland, OR until she was fired at the beginning of the new year.
James’ “crime’ leading to her termination?
An outstanding act of kindness and good will toward a customer during the Christmas season.
On Dec. 23, Emily James, a senior banker at a U.S. Bank call center in Portland, said she spent more than an hour trying to help [Marc] Eugenio, a bank customer whose paycheck from a new job had been placed on hold. The hold meant he couldn’t access the funds – just over $1,000 – and was essentially broke before Christmas.
She told Eugenio to visit his Clackamas bank branch in the morning – Christmas Eve – and ask a bank manager to verify the funds from the issuing bank. Eugenio went to his bank and got his boss to verify his employment, but the branch manager was on vacation, and the bank was closing early for the holiday. There was no one, he was told, who could lift the hold. (more…)
[Brevard County] Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved a ceremonial resolution, sponsored by District 5 Commissioner Kristine Isnardi, that affirms that they are committed to “uphold and adhere to the principles embodied in the Constitution of the United States of America.”
Right off the top, why is Isnardi seeking to pass a resolution, which by definition has no legal weight of the law behind it, saying “we want to protect the Constitution” when in fact upon taking the office of Commissioner, she and the other Commissioners take an oath to follow the laws of the State of Florida, the Florida Constitution and the United States Constitution?
Why the need for the resolution?
Isn’t the oath of Commissioners good enough?
We guess not and that is both sad and troubling.
Isnardi said “[not following the Constitution] would not likely happen with this commission, of course, but may occur with future commissions.”
She contends that she has “no doubt” that “if certain lawmakers had their way, they would rewrite the whole” Constitution. (more…)
In case you have missed it, Brevard County Officials are involved in what started out as a bruhaha and has involved into a lawsuit.
The issue is the whether the County Commission’s vote to pass “critical need funding” for the Sheriff’s office in 2019 was legal.
Commissioners voted 4-1 in favor of declaring a “critical need” related the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office budget. County Commissioner John Tobia cast the no vote.
With that required “supermajority vote” of at least four commissioners, it allows the county to exceed a voter-approved cap in how much money can be raised via property taxes in the Law Enforcement Municipal Service Taxing Unit portion of the budget.
Although property tax rates for the county general fund and 18 other specialized operating tax rates would decline under County Manager Frank Abbate’s proposed budget, that would not be the case for the Law Enforcement MSTU portion of the budget. (more…)
