As state lawmakers finalize budget cuts, Education leaders say schools will be shut down and teachers will be laid off. It could get worse. Amendment one, the property tax cut plan approved in January, hasn?t affected the budget yet and as Whitney Ray tells us a campaign promise to hold education harmless could be harder to keep.<\/p>\n

Bus loads of kids from across the state toured the Capitol Tuesday to learn more about the legislative process.<\/p>\n

?I saw Charlie Crist,? said 4th Grader Gregory Nye<\/p>\n

Part of the process is making good on campaign promises. Education is facing a billion dollar cut this year and that?s after Governor Charlie Crist promised to hold education harmless while campaigning for amendment one, which will take more away from schools. House Speaker Designate Ray Sansom back pedaled when asked about the change of tune.<\/p>\n

?Harmless means not raising taxes, and we?re not raising taxes,? said Sansom.<\/p>\n

Teachers brought their umbrellas to the Capitol to send a message to lawmakers. Teachers Union President Andy Ford said dipping into the rainy day funds is the only way the Governor can keep his promise.<\/p>\n

?Schools are not being held harmless,? said Ford. ?The legislature has the ability to hold us harmless by dipping into the rainy day funds and that would get us back to where we need to be.?<\/p>\n

Governor Crist said lawmakers still have time to save schools.<\/p>\n

?Anything?s possible. We have nine days to do what?s right,? said Crist.<\/p>\n

But doing what?s right means keeping your promise, which is hard when there is no money. Amendment one is saving home owners an average of 250,000 dollars a year in property taxes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As state lawmakers finalize budget cuts, Education leaders say schools will be shut down and teachers will be laid off. It could get worse. Amendment one, the property tax cut plan approved in January, hasn?t affected the budget yet and as Whitney Ray tells us a campaign promise to hold education harmless could be harder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3,7,6,22,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}