Representative Fischer implies protecting public school children isn't the state's job

This is a little wonky. In the recently passed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act there were a lot of requirements that the state didn't properly fund and the part about putting security in each school was explained to me this way.

It is a mandate to fund an officer of some sort in every school if you take the grant, but it's not a mandate if you pass on the grant and do nothing. The grant does not come close to covering all the costs.

  
Okay with that out of the way I will just get right to Mr. Fischer's indifference to protecting our children. From the Folio in an article about how the state didn't adequately fund security measures.

From the Folio:

Thanks to Rep. Jason Fischer, R-Jax for leading to more careful scrutiny of SB 7026, the school safety bill authorizing, among other things, dollars for schools to hire and train "school safety assistants," including non-law-enforcement personnel. Fischer is correct in his assertion that school districts are not "mandated" to take the school safety grant money authorized in the law. This has been corrected to more accurately reflect the parameters of the bill.

There are, however, 50 uses of the word "requiring" in the 105-page bill, creating statutory mandates that increase duties for numerous government employees: state-level education and law enforcement officials, county law enforcement officers, school districts, school threat assessment teams, and individual schools.

Many of these increased duties might be better accomplished by accepting school safety dollars under the optional plan that would increase "school safety assistants" in our schools. The fact that districts want to expand security in the most responsible manner possible, and would have to reach into other pockets of money to do so is, Fischer's implies, not the state's problem.

http://folioweekly.com/stories/guns-but-not-money,19714

I hope you take the time to check out the whole article it is a good and important read. Two more things, the author would say Fischer didn't say protecting our kids wasn't important, he just strongly implied, protecting them was not the state's problem.

Fischer has never been a friend of public education and has routinely worked to dismantle it so its no surprise he doesn't care that DCPS doesn't has enough money to do their job adequately and protect our children. What's worse though is he has shown this indifference while giving his major donor's charter school an extra 2 million dollars.   

Friends we need to replace Fischer and his ilk with legislators who care about and want to improve public ed. We can no longer hope the people in Tallahassee will do the right thing.