This bill is up for its first hearing on Tuesday in the Education committee. I think we need to flood them with emails against it. Please each do unique emails with different subject headings from each of you and anyone else to whom you pass this along. (You can do the same email to each senator).
This is the key provision they added:
(c) Eligibility for state financial aid awards and tuition assistance grants must be reevaluated each term based on the program of study to which the student has been admitted and in which he or she is enrolled. Beginning with the 2022-2023 academic year and thereafter, eligibility for such awards and grants is contingent on the student’s enrollment in a career certificate or degree program on an approved list developed pursuant to s. 1009.46(2)(a).
It also changes the way the scholarships are funded and the legislat
Joe Gruters:
gruters.joe@flsenate.gov
Jennifer Bradley:
bradley.jennifer@flsenate.gov
Doug, Broxson:
broxson.doug@flsenate.gov
Manny Diaz, Jr.
diaz.manny@flsenate.gov
Travis Hutson:
hutson.travis@flsenate.gov
Kathleen Passidomo:
passidomo.kathleen@flsenate.gov
We need to stop this bill!
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what does this bill mean for out of state benacquisto recipients entering for fall 2021? will the scholarship be cut?
What does “remote from the civic center” mean?
If you want to speak. You can go to the Civic center and they are going to have you speak from there, not from the Senate.
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I don’t know what that scholarship is. I didn’t see it referenced in the bill.
It is in the bill. But there is another thread about the Benacquisto.
I never heard of that one. What is it?
The scholarship for National Merit Scholars.
don’t they get that from the national merit scholarship fund
Not the Benacquisto. That comes from the state of Florida, just like Bright Futures.
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We have to save all the scholarships!
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It’ll be up to any university to decide. If I understand properly, some have said they’ll pick up the slack (FSU) and some have said they won’t (UF).
It’ll likely be a battle between “these OOS students cost us too much money” + “we spend too much money on universities” v. “universities are essential to short term/long term growth, development, and influence, as are Benacquisto scholars”.
Governments routinely subsidize areas with too few majors-for example, the US government subsidizes the study of needed strategic languages such as Urdu, but not French, for which demand is low and supply is high. Not sure why this is controversial now. If Florida needs more nurses and engineers, it makes sense to subsidize those majors.
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They could, by providing incentives to study these majors (special scholarships) and providing additional financial support for universities that create a support system to ensure high graduation rates in these subjects.
Cutting the state grants to everyone else doesn’t educate more nurses and engineers.
(sidebar: Florida doesn’t have any Critical Language Flagship, but
French can be subsidized if it is linked to an African language, ie., French and Bambara, French and Songhai, and especially Akan, Wolof, Zulu. Demand in the language is fairly high when added to other fields, especially due to the fact Canada is a major economic partner that requires French language communication, and companies like Airbus, Michelin, whoever is exploiting a swath of the Marcellus Shale… However it’s not a strategic language on its own due to France being a non controversial ally, 
fortunately! The most strategic critical languages remain Chinese and Russian, then Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Portuguese.)
May have been already mentioned but I wouldn’t restrict or require any majors for eligibility. I would, however ,raise the bar on overall requirements and bands of awards. Having two kids gone through the system, it’s pretty easy to qualify for some BF. I thin k it should be more of a reward for higher achievement than what it is today. They did increase requirements a few yrs ago but not by much. Not trying to offend anyone, but as it is today, if you can’t achieve the entry level of BF, I’m not sure how prepared you are for college.
The proposal is that Bright Futures recipients would be funded for up to 60 credit hours (minus any AP/DE credits earned before graduating from highschool). Only those who choose from an approved list of majors would receive funding for the remaining 60 credit hours. If you do not choose an approved major, you won’t receive any more funds. Additionally, the amount of tuition coverage for ANY hours will be determined year by year, in general appropriations, instead of being an established percentage.