Varsity Sports Exemption Gets Boost from Senate  

Senator Flores Introduces Amendment

Every train has some ‘cool’ cars too!  SB 926 maybe this year’s educational train bill and there are some good parts to it. This amendment is one of the good parts.

For a number of years I have been lobbying anyone that would listen in the Florida legislature to revise Florida Statute 1003.4282 to better apply participation in competitive athletics to the physical education wavier in high school.

This session Citrus County’s Florida House of Representative Ralph E. Massullo, MD, graciously ran HB 6015 and Senator Debbie Mayfield ran the Senate companion bill SB 782.  Yesterday in SB 926’s final committee stop in the Senate Rules Committee, Senator Anitere Flores introduced an amendment that includes the language that Rep. Massullo and Sen. Mayfield have in their bills respective bills and included it in SB 926.  This is most encouraging and positive. Sen. Flores’s SB 926 with this amendment passed Senate Rules Committee unanimously. Next SB 926 moves to the full Senate floor.

If passed what could result is a significant number of students that participate in interscholastic sports would no longer have to also take P.E. at the school or virtually and thereby give up other course options.

Florida law requires that a student achieves one-credit in physical education for graduation.  Currently there are P.E. waivers that a student can get if they successfully complete marching band, JORTC, dance and on a stricter basis, interscholastic sport, due to the courses’ physical endurance work. This amendment would improve the current statute to read, “Participation in an interscholastic sport at the junior varsity or varsity level for two full seasons shall satisfy the one-credit requirement in physical education.”

I appreciate Sen. Flores bring forward this amendment and Senator Wilton Simpson, who has also been encouraging and helping improve this statute.

Stay tune…

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