Legislative Session 2026: Education Bills to Watch

Members of the Florida Coalition for Thriving Public Schools are engaged in educating lawmakers and the public about the impact of bills moving this Legislative session.

Bills include:

HB 1119/SB 1692 “Harmful to Minors” – OPPOSE

• Districts remain legally exposed, facing lawsuits from both parents and the state

• Taxpayers pay the price as litigation drains funds from classrooms and objections/reviews distract from pressing issues parents actually care about

• Educators over-remove out of fear, reducing academic rigor

• Parents lose choice, and students lose access to college-level reading

• Public schools become less competitive with private options that face fewer restrictions

Rather than fixing constitutional flaws identified by the courts, HB 1119/SB 1692 expands them. The responsible path is to table this bill until the 11th Circuit rules and craft a solution that respects parental rights, local control, and the Constitution.

HB 1071/SB 1090 “Education” – OPPOSE

• Increased restrictions on how educational funds can be used, with broad prohibitions that could limit local autonomy and programs serving underrepresented communities.
• Expanded state control over curriculum and instructional materials, allowing for forced use, removal, or sanctioning of materials with little consideration of local needs or content concerns.
• (House sponsor announced a pending amendment)
• Altered consent mechanisms for health and reproductive education under SB 1090, imposing an opt-in requirement

This bill reflects a broader shift toward state oversight and uniformity, with significant implications for educational equity, local decision-making, and student access to inclusive learning opportunities. This is a very big bill with some positive aspects that could result in more support for early learning, math and literacy programs, and more accountability for charter programs. The “Administrative Efficiency” (SB 320) bill that cleared the Senate is now listed as a related bill. Amendments are likely to happen.

HB 31/SB 1106 “Recognizing Judea and Samaria” – OPPOSE

• Requires all public K-12 school instructional materials and library media center collections adopted beginning July 1, 2026, to refer to the land north of Jerusalem as “Samaria” and south of Jerusalem as “Judea”
• Prohibits instructional and library materials adopted after that date from using “West Bank” to refer to that land
• Note: this applies to both school districts & charter schools as well as higher education

If enacted, this would likely cause viewpoint discrimination in the library around books addressing the history and continued conflict in Israel where books written from a Palestinian point-of-view would likely face censorship based on word choice.

HB 331/SB 1492 “Reproductive Health and Instructional Materials” – SUPPORT

• Returns the language in 1003.42 regarding approval of this curriculum back to what it was before HB 1069 (2023)
• Local districts will have to annually approve this curriculum through the public meeting adoption process

A good bill that is incredibly limited in scope to restore local control over this curriculum.

HB 1059/SB 1062 “Speech and Debate”

• Amended in its first committee to clearly account for the $4.6M appropriated for this bill, and it does ensure funding is set aside to support the programs at the school level
• Designates a “Florida Speech and Debate Week” each year in November
• Funds the development of a certification program for educators
• Includes FLVS in its plans

If the local funding comes through for this program (preventing it from becoming another unfunded mandate), this bill has a lot of positives. The main concern is that this requires a half-credit in speech and debate for high school graduation.

HB 677/SB 790 “Freedom to Learn Act” –SUPPORT

• HB 6031 (a full repeal of HB 1467/HB 1069 language in statute 1006.28) is also related to this bill
• Revises provisions relating to certain trainings, standards, instruction, school district procedures, and requirements relating to parental notification

This is the third session where this bill has been filed with the intention of overturning key provisions from HB 1069 (2023) that have been found to be discriminatory when put into practice. The House version has had its first reading.

SJR 1104/HJR 583 Religious Expression in Public Schools–OPPOSE

Florida lawmakers are advancing SJR 1104, a proposal that would place a constitutional amendment on the November 2026 ballot under the banner of “religious freedom in public schools.” This amendment is unnecessary and dangerous. The religious liberty rights it claims to protect are already guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution and the Florida Constitution—and have been repeatedly upheld by the courts. Despite its framing, SJR 1104 would weaken protections for students and invite state-sanctioned discrimination in public schools. Supporters’ rhetoric makes the intent clear: to “return God to public schools” and restore a mythic past rooted in Christian nationalist ideology—the false belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should privilege one set of religious beliefs over others. At a moment when Christian nationalism is increasingly shaping education policy, SJR 1104 would tie the hands of educators and administrators, privileging the majority religion and making it harder to protect students from harassment and exclusion—especially religious minorities, LGBTQ+ students, and young people from marginalized communities. Its vague language invites selective enforcement and threatens the constitutional promise that public schools belong to everyone. It also risks blurring the line between religious belief and academic instruction, allowing ideology to undermine fact-based education. Students should be free to express their beliefs—but schools must still teach science, history, and medicine grounded in evidence, not religious doctrine. People of moral responsibility can oppose this resolution by defending religious freedom, human dignity, and inclusive public education. No one’s beliefs should be imposed by the state—and every child deserves safety, respect, and the freedom to learn.

SB 320/HB 963 Administrative Efficiency–SUPPORT

• Contains policies intended to help with recruitment and retention of teachers, including:
• Creating a 10-year teaching certificate (currently certificates are valid for 5 years),
• Expanding eligibility for teachers to be paid for advanced degrees, and
• Reestablishing multiyear contracts. For 15+ years now all new teachers have been placed on an annual contract that expires at the end of the school year unless the school district takes action to renew the annual contract for one more year. Allowing teachers to earn three-year contracts as was the case prior to 2009 could help significantly with retention–and in turn with student success.
• SB 320 has already passed the Senate unanimously. HB 963 has not yet been heard in committee.

SB 1216/HB 1187 Instructional Personnel Salary Schedules–SUPPORT

Over the past 15+ years, there have been numerous laws passed that restrict how teachers can be paid. Ostensibly designed as “performance pay” in an attempt to “reward” highly effective teachers, in practice these laws have led to compression of the salary schedule–where experienced teachers are often making the same amount, or just a little more, than the brand new teachers they are mentoring. These bills would relax some of the current restrictions on salary schedules and allow school districts and local unions greater flexibility in negotiating salary schedules.

To truly fix the issue of teacher salaries, there needs to be both policy changes (like SB 1216/HB 1187) and a significant increase in revenue. While the policy changes in these bills would be very welcome news, policy change alone is not enough to address the issue.

SB 1296/HB 995 Public Employee Relations Commission–OPPOSE

These bills continue a years’ long attack on public sector labor unions in general and teachers unions in particular. FEA and its local unions have consistently pushed back against attempts to restrict students’ freedom to learn and teachers’ freedom to teach. FEA and its local unions have refused to be silent on Florida’s massive teacher and staff shortage and the fact that we are #50 in the nation in average teacher pay. These bills are retribution for FEA, its locals and its members speaking up for what is best for students, educators and school communities.