Special education rooms could feature cameras watching over students if Florida lawmakers keep up support for a bipartisan bill.
The legislation seeks to provide an objective eye in situations in which students, particularly those who are nonverbal, might be abused or mistreated.
The House bill, HB 859, sponsored by Reps. Chase Tramont, a Republican from Port Orange, and Kevin Chambliss, a Democrat from Homestead, passed its first committee last week and second committee Wednesday. It has one committee to go before landing before the full House.
“This is a situation that is a safety concern and, in this House, safety is one of the things we think is top priority when it comes to the resources that we allocate,” Chambliss said in presenting the bill to the House PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee.
The Senate bill, SB 1170, is sponsored by Sen. Alexis Calatayud, a Republican from Miami. The Senate version was approved by the first of three committees Tuesday.
The legislation would let parents ask principals to install video cameras in classrooms in which a majority of the students are receiving special education services.
Sen. Danny Burgess, a Republican from Zephyrhills, said the bill is “a good thing to do for all parties, the families, the children, as well as the educators and staff and faculty.”
The legislation would require schools to establish criteria for approval or denial of requests and establish the infrastructure for processing requests. A parent could submit just one request per student per school year.
Cameras would have to be put in a classroom within 30 days of approved requests.
Advocates traveled to Tallahassee to share their personal experiences with mistreatment behind the doors of special education classrooms.
Elizabeth Bonker, a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointee to a federal autism research committee and director of Communication 4 ALL, a nonprofit advocating for communication for nonspeakers with autism, appeared before the Senate Education Pre-K-12 committee.
“SB 1170 is vitally important to protect voiceless children. Speaking children can come home and tell you if they have been locked in a closet, but a nonspeaking child cannot,” Bonker told the committee using a text-to-speech program.
One of the criticisms of the bill is overreach into classrooms, although lawmakers gave the bill unanimous support in each committee.
“I understand the desire for freedom instead of regulation; however, each of you took an oath before God to protect and defend the rights of the citizens of Florida, including citizens like me who cannot speak,” Bonker said.
Bonker added that cameras in classrooms could save a school district millions of dollars in legal fees and damages.
In January, Fox 13 News reported an instance in which a Hillsborough County school bus aide was accused of hitting a 9-year-old student with autism on the bus. That incident was caught by a camera.
The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights wrote in 2022 that students with disabilities may face heightened discipline “because they are not receiving the support, services, interventions, strategies, and modifications to school or district policies that they need to manage their disability-based behavior.”
The department found students with disabilities may be “subjected to discrimination based on their disability when being disciplined, such as when students with disabilities are unnecessarily disciplined more severely than students without disabilities for the same or similar behavior.”
The bills do not include money for the schools to install cameras. If it passes, lawmakers could include money in the state budget to fund the program. Otherwise, it could be up to schools to pay for cameras.
The state approved a pilot program providing cameras in classrooms in Broward County in 2021. That cost $774,194 for 320 cameras over three years, according to a bill analysis.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Contact Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
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