Last week, the News Service of Florida reported that the Florida House of Representatives has “backed off a plan that called for the university system’s Board of Governors to create a performance-funding system based on individual school performance, rather than ranking the schools against each other, with the bottom three losing out on state performance money.”But the House is still telling the BOG to get moving on working out a plan to make the performance-based funding (PBF) system fair. House Majority Leader Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, has sponsored Amendment 843425 to the committee substitute for Senate Bill 4. It says that “by October 1, 2019, the Board of Governors, in consultation with the state universities, shall submit to the Legislature recommendations for future consideration on the most efficient process to achieve a complete performance-based continuous improvement model focused on outcomes that provides for the equitable distribution of performance funds.”
The News Service of Florida reported that he wants the changes to include providing PBF money based “‘continuous improvement’ by the schools regardless of how they are ranked against each other.”
“That is my vision,” Rodrigues told the News Service of Florida. “We will see what comes to us in the study.”
Rodrigues, who works at Florida Gulf Coast University, is part of a bipartisan coalition that state Rep. Ramon Alexander, D-Tallahassee, has helped put together for the goal of overhauling the PBF system. Alexander, an alumnus of Florida A&M University, has reached out to representatives with ties to public universities that have been denied PBF money in past years under the current system that the BOG uses. Some of the other supporters include lawmakers who have relationships with the University of West Florida and University of North Florida.
CS/SB 4 with the amendment by Rodrigues is on track to be passed by the entire Florida House.