District advisory council presses legislators on ESE funding, school start times; teachers voice safety concerns

Jacqueline Steele, chair of the District Advisory Council (DAC), told the board that a DAC subgroup met after the governor’s budget was released and is tracking issues of concern for Leon County Schools, particularly a roughly 13% proposed decrease in Exceptional Student Education (ESE) funding in the governor’s budget and related impacts to gifted funding. “When the governor’s budget came out, one of those things we hopped on was ESE funding,” Steele said, describing a follow‑up advocacy meeting that drew about 10 to 15 DAC members.

Steele said the DAC is monitoring a bill on school start times — referenced as House Bill 261 in the meeting — which would remove a state‑mandated start time and return authority to local school districts. The DAC is also tracking potential changes to advisory council statutes and other bills; Steele said the DAC’s legislative subgroup will meet in early March and that the DAC plans to invite local legislators to hear parents’ concerns.

Board members praised the DAC’s recent meeting format, noting it fostered cross‑partisan advocacy and produced immediate next steps. A board member suggested the DAC could use existing resources such as the Florida School Boards Association’s (FSBA) legislative platform when coordinating advocacy.

During public comment, Heather Garcia, a Starmount Drive resident, urged the board to publicly advocate for teacher funding and to speak on behalf of teachers’ funding needs. Teacher Kristen Hill Bolander, who identified herself as a high‑school teacher at Gretchen Everhart, told the board she had sent a December 12 email that received no reply and described classroom safety problems: “My classroom alone has spilled out over 300 major incident reports this year… I was cussed out from 08:30 this morning until 03:30 this afternoon. I have been scratched and punched all day today,” she said, asking the board to respond to her earlier email.

Another public speaker, Marie Claire Lehman, who co‑chairs the Title I committee, urged the board not to adopt restrictive language in a forthcoming policy on public participation that could limit community input when large numbers of speakers show up on a single topic. Lehman suggested procedural options the board could use to manage lengthy meetings without cutting individual speaker time, such as temporarily shortening recognitions or voting to limit speaker time at the start of a meeting when large turnout is expected.

Board members and staff agreed to continue coordinating around legislative priorities and to ensure community groups and advisory committees can bring local perspectives to the delegation. No formal board action on the DAC report or public comments was taken at the meeting.