How Florida education reform bill didn't become law: Opponents took fight to Crist
Thrasher pushed it through, never expecting Crist's veto
Posted: June 19, 2010 - 11:38pm
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BOB MACK/The Times-Union
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist talks to 50th No More founder Colleen Wood during a Jacksonville campaign stop in April. Crist's office denies the governor ever told Senate Bill 6 supporters he would sign the bill.
TALLAHASSEE - As the legislative session approached last year, Senate Republicans decided to launch an ambitious education reform effort. At its center would be an attempt to overhaul teachers' employment protections and use student achievement as a basis for their pay.
The bill would be carried by a veteran of past education reform battles, Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, the junior member of the Senate Education Committee.
"I guess you could say I drew the short straw," Thrasher said, laughing, "or my fellow members knew that they didn't want to touch that one."
In its two-month trip through Florida politics, Senate Bill 6 became one of the most controversial education bills in years. Social media like Facebook and Twitter helped energize opponents, while teacher unions drew lines against business supporters to kill the measure. And a governor used it to take his first tentative steps away from his lifelong membership in the Republican Party.
The final reverberations from the battle have yet to be felt. But this is the story of Senate Bill 6 so far: how it came to be, how it lived and how it died.
Racing to battle
The fight was rooted in the debate over how to position the state for the Race to the Top grants being offered by the U.S. Department of Education.
The program offered states millions of dollars in exchange for promising education reform efforts. Jeff Wright, director of public policy advocacy for the Florida Education Association, said the union and the