Both of my kids have graduated from a Florida HS, in fact, my youngest graduated from HS just last year. I really can't complain about the public school system. We live in a middle class/working class suburb and I never felt unsafe sending my kids to school. The teachers, for the most part, did a good job with some being better than others. From my perspective, Florida schools, or at least the one my kids attended, are not flashy, state of the art schools with modern everything/the very latest technology like they have up north. We had actually moved to Florida from a northern state and I will admit that it was a bit of a shock to see the difference between the school systems.
That said, while I'm sure that Florida schools have discipline/drug problems like just about all schools do, I never once heard concern about gangs which had been a growing problem in the northern school system that we left.
Florida also offers excellent dual enrollment opportunities for students which allows them to get college and/or vocational credit while still in HS. Florida offers Bright Future scholarships for students who maintain a certain GPA, make qualifying SAT/ACT scores and do a minimum set number of volunteer service hours.
As far as teacher salaries go, I really can't speak to that. I do know that we have teachers living in our neighborhood and that there are many longtime teachers in our school system. If I recall correctly, the governor also gave teachers bonuses fairly recently related to working through the pandemic.
Another thing I will note is that when our school very suddenly had to switch to distance learning during the early part of the pandemic, they did it fast and without a hitch. By comparison it took the northern, state of the art school district that we had left years before months to finally get their students switched over to distance learning. In fact, I think that the Florida brick and mortar schools may have reopened by the time the northern school district got it's act together enough to get the kids on distance learning and they didn't reopen brick and mortar schools for a year.
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