Escambia County School Board members spent substantial time at a workshop reviewing and expanding a draft legislative priorities platform, focusing discussion on graduation-rate calculations tied to GEDs, the state’s GATE program and the use of PSAT scores as a concordant pathway to graduation.

Board members and staff said the GATE program (a state initiative intended to serve students who earn a GED prior to their cohort graduation) creates a perverse incentive under current reporting rules because a GED earned before a class’s graduation date counts against a school’s graduation rate. Board member Bobbitt, who described student pathways that send some students to George Stone College to earn industry certifications and GEDs, asked the district to request that the state either count GEDs earned prior to cohort graduation as graduates or remove those GEDs from the graduation-rate denominator.

Other board members said the state has recently permitted PSAT English scores to serve as a concordant score for graduation and warned that scores given to tenth graders months before May state testing could reduce incentives for high-performing students to take the spring exam, potentially reducing learning-gain measures and subjecting school grades to volatility.

Board members asked staff to refine the proposed legislative language and to take the issue to the Florida School Boards Association conference in early December to coordinate with other districts. Superintendent Leonard and board members said they would prepare draft language and send it to the district’s legislative contacts and local lawmakers for consideration. The board also discussed workforce-development funding and previous state cap grants, noting continued interest in reapplying for available grants.

No formal board vote was held; members directed staff to draft language and promised follow-up to share the final draft with legislators and FSBA representatives.