A key Florida House committee approved legislation Tuesday that would allow school districts to grant principals of underperforming schools extraordinary power to hire and fire teachers.
The legislation, HB 287, would establish a pilot program where three Florida school districts with failing schools could promote a top performing principal to implement institutional changes, including staff shakeups, that can currently only be made by school boards.
"We have to stop pretending that we can dictate every specific detail to these schools and how they're turned around," the bill's sponsor, Rep. Manny Diaz (R-Hialeah), told the House K-12 Subcommittee before Tuesday's vote. "If I'm telling you, 'Go get the best coach, go get the best CEO, and bring him into this building,' you have to have trust in that person."
The so-called 'principal autonomy' legislation is drawing the ire of the new president of the state teacher union, who takes issue with concentrating power in the hands of a single individual.
"Not all principals are instructional leaders, and every school should have a high-functioning principal that's an instructional leader with a team of folks around them that make the school run. No one individual makes any school run," said Florida Education Association President Joanne McCall.