GREENACRES, Fla. — The Palm Beach County School Board and superintendent met Wednesday morning with the Palm Beach County Legislative Delegation to talk about priorities for the upcoming 2024 legislative session, which begins in January.
The school board prepared its list of priorities for lawmakers to tackle in Tallahassee, and lawmakers asked questions and spoke about legislation they were sponsoring.
The discussion over whether students should be expelled for having a mini stun gun or Taser on school property also reached local lawmakers.
School board chairman Frank Barbieri continued to advocate for change in state law regarding how some weapons are handled on campus.
"All I'm asking you to do is redefine what a Taser is," Barbieri said. "I'm not suggesting for a minute that children should be able to bring Tasers to the school."
What he does want is for students to not be automatically expelled for carrying a small stun gun or Taser in their backpack. It's an issue WPTV has been covering for weeks.
Last month, WPTV Education reporter Stephanie Susskind sat down with Leeyah Brown, who was arrested and expelled from Palm Beach Lakes High School last year for having a three-inch stun gun in her backpack for protection while walking home from school. She never used it at school.
Palm Beach School District Superintendent Mike Burke reiterated the issue to lawmakers.
"We want to keep every weapon off our campus. That's not what we're trying to ease up on," Burke said. "It's just providing more latitude with the discipline that if we feel a student was in a hardship situation that maybe expulsion is not appropriate. Maybe there's another way to deal with it. We'd like to have that flexibility locally."
Not all school board members wanted to fight for this issue.
During a school board meeting last month, board members Barbara McQuinn and Karen Brill voted against putting this issue on the legislative agenda.
"I'm afraid we are opening the door to more weapons on our campuses," McQuinn said at the time.
But at least one local lawmaker, state Sen. Lori Berman, D-Boynton Beach, is on board.
"I was very distraught to hear about this girl who was an 'A' student who now has this black mark on her record for the rest of her life," Berman said.
She said she'll try to push for change in Tallahassee on this issue.
"We're going to look into whether or not we can do it. It would be done within a framework that already exists in law and it would give the discretion to the superintendents to make those decisions," Berman said. "Sometimes when you file these bills, what happens is you get the discussion going and then it gets put on maybe other issues and maybe the Department of Education might issue regulations on their own, or maybe it would become part of another bill. It may not have to pass ultimately as a free-standing bill. You get the discussion going and people start thinking about how they can address the issue."
Berman also spoke about sponsoring bills to increase starting teacher pay to $65,000 and providing free breakfast and lunch to all Florida public school students.
Other lawmakers also spoke about sponsoring bills to help school districts grow their own teachers and help more students become eligible for Bright Futures scholarships.
Burke told lawmakers that their priorities boil down to two things: freedom and money.
"Funding is essential to do all the work we need to do to support our kids, and freedom is becoming more relevant because we are highly regulated," Burke said. "We have over 1,400 pages of state laws, just last year alone we had 36 bills that resulted in 124 actions our district must take, so I was hoping the Legislature this year could go a little easier on the regulation and maybe also provide us some much-needed revenue."
Burke said he was appreciative of the discussion and open dialogue with local lawmakers. They had several questions for the school board about mental health services and funding.
"Coming out of the pandemic, it's become more of a national issue and you are seeing more and more children who unfortunately are depressed or anxious and could use a little extra help," Burke said.
District officials said more than 20,000 students have received mental health services on campus. Leaders also said state funding only covers about one-third of the cost of school safety to run the police department, as well as about one-third of the cost to operate mental health programs.
The superintendent also updated the delegation on whether the district would participate in the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program, an idea that he floated during last year's meeting. The program allows civilian school district employees to carry firearms on campus after they complete a rigorous training program. He said the school district put two employees through the guardian training with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office over the summer. While he called the training impressive, it is not something the school district is pursuing at this time.
"We followed through with our commitment to pilot and go through the training, and that provided us more knowledge about the program," Burke said. "At this point, we've not deployed any guardians to our schools. That would take a lot more planning and also support from our school board, which we have not really brought that issue to them for any type of approval."
Burke said he looks forward to keeping the lines of communication open with lawmakers as they prepare and go through the session.
"If they are concerned about an issue before maybe legislation is written, let's come back home and check out our schools and see if it's really an issue or not," Burke said.