“Not one parent ever called me to support this.”
“If parents and teachers are so in favor of charter conversions, why is the Florida PTA is lobbying so hard to defeat this bill?”
This afternoon Sen. Nancy Detert R-28 (Venice), rose to speak these and other courageous utterances in opposition to HB 867/SB 862, referred to by critics as the “parent trigger” bill. The bill failed this afternoon by an exceedingly rare 20 to 20 vote. Her vocal stance against it was doubtless a major factor. Her performance today came one day after she introduced, explained and then withdrew for lack of support a slew of 11 hostile amendments to the bill during its second reading on Tuesday.
She broke ranks to mention the lack of genuine support among anyone except out-of-state special interests who would profit directly from the measure, and forcefully advanced technocratic arguments against it as well. Among them, that charter schools fail at higher rate than public schools (5% to 1%) and that, in her words, “If you’re in a failing charter school, it will take you two years to get out of it,” citing the bill’s lack of a provision to deal with charter experiments that don’t improve the school.
You can be sure that whether they improved the quality of education in chronically lousy schools or not, the charter school managers would walk away with plenty of taxpayer money to show for their effort.
Thank you, Senator Detert, for showing that even in an overheated hyper-partisan Legislature, common sense can still prevail when it comes to a crucial issue.
The Florida Squeeze 
And thanks to Republican Sens. Evers, Diaz de la Portilla, Garcia, Dean, and Latvala who also broke ranks to defeat it. Our deepest gratitude goes out to the Senate and House Democrats who stood together in opposition to this bill. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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This is not a partisan issue, and these Senators are to be commended for standing with Floridians against deformers like Jeb Bush.
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Thanks to the Republican and Democratic Senators who rose to the occasion and defeated the so called “parent trigger” bill. Special thanks to Senator Nancy Detert for her courageous comments that she has not received one call from a parent who wanted see this bill passed. Thank you.
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She was great. Again just another reason why they can’t run Crist. Sorry but Crist does not look like a leader by any standards after this session.
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What does Crist have to do with this session?
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He has been put in the hot seat on these issues for 12 plus years…outside of the 1 (4 year) term when he bailed for a better job. He never stood up against his party until his polling said he was loosing. We commend these Republicans for doing the right thing when it is not easy. Crist would never have acted like a statesman. He is also more dirty than the shit on the bottom of my dog’s ass.
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Sorry Alex but you are wrong and I am now a Democrat. I voted for Crist because I told him that if you veto SB6 that’s what I would do and I did!
Go find someone else to blame, he isn’t even in this now.
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well written..The Senator stood up on an important issue..passionate about our schools
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There’s a special place in heaven for brave, no-nonsense senators, like Nancy Detert, who break ranks with her party and put children ahead of special interests. Thank you Nancy for your hard work, masterful plucking apart of this very bad bill and its very bad clauses! You rock.
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