Yesterday's announcement by the Obama Administration that only Delaware and Tennessee received grants in the first round of Race to the Top competition has provoked finger-pointing among the state's biggest teachers' union, The Florida Education Association, and Republican lawmakers over whose fault it is that only five of Florida's 67 local teachers' unions signed on in support of the state bid.
As the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports,
One of the grant reviewers wrote that while Florida acknowledged limited teacher union support, its application did not "address how the state will move forward assertively to generate union buy-in," though "teachers along with their associations are deemed essential" in the new reform plans.
And with the passage of John Thrasher's SB 6 last week, relations between the two groups appear to be at their lowest ebb in many a day.
But there is still time to acquire funding in a second round of RTTT, and it would be foolhardy if the two groups couldn't work together to obtain the more than $3 billion still on the table. (Though it will be less money this time around: Florida applied for $1.1 billion in stimulus money, but the maximum later this year would be $700 million.)
This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2010.