TALLAHASSEE — As the school year comes to a close for families across Florida over the next few weeks, many students throughout the state have spent the year in classrooms without a full-time teacher due to the nation’s largest teacher shortage. For those teachers still in the classroom, they have been dealing with a lack of resources, as Florida’s per-pupil funding for students ranks 43rd in the nation. When adjusted for inflation, Florida is spending over $2,000 less per student in the 2023-24 school year than it did in 2007-2008, before the Great Recession.

Why are Florida’s public schools dealing with these shortfalls?

After riding into office on the Tea Party wave of 2010, then Florida Governor and now Senator Rick Scott signed his first budget in 2011 which included more than $1.3 billion in cuts to public education, a hole public schools are still trying to dig out of more than a decade later.“Every child in Florida deserves the freedom to learn in a safe environment that allows them to thrive, but Senator Rick Scott’s devastating cuts to public education when he was Governor are still being felt in our schools today,” stated Scott Watch Communications Director Anders Croy. “Parents want their children’s classrooms to be places of learning, not political battlefields, but self-serving politicians like Rick Scott attack our educators, slash funding for our students, and put their own political ambitions ahead of what’s best for working families who only want their kids to be able to achieve the American Dream. As this school year wraps up, a generation of students have felt the harmful impacts of Rick Scott’s anti-public education agenda and parents deserve to know about his record of placing politics ahead of what’s best for Florida’s children and families.”