Faith Ocasio | Civics Education

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Civics Initiative newsletter. We have given it a temporary name, but want to hear suggestions from you, the stakeholders, for a more appropriate permanent name. Send us your ideas. Think 21st century.

The Initiative officially launched at the October 9-10, 2013, “Closing the Gap” workshop at St. Petersburg College Seminole. We are up and running, ready to engage with the stakeholders at all 28 members of the Florida College System. Those who attended the workshop last fall are familiar with the Initiative and the issues on the agenda. For those who did not attend, please check the Background/Mission tab to catch up on what the project is about.

Welcome to the Civics Initiative website. This is your website, maintained by the Institute to connect you, the stakeholders in Civics Education, with one another and with the resources available to help achieve our shared mission of closing the gap in civics knowledge among the current and future generations of students in the Florida College System.

We want to hear from you, especially about your Best Practices and ideas for civics-related projects you are considering for Fall 2014. To join the conversation, go to the Blog tab. By clicking Submit a Post you are able to input your Best Practice or Best Idea. The Institute staff will distill the best and post them on a regular basis. The purpose of this site is to share information so we aren’t individually reinventing the wheel. It a civics project worked well for you, perhaps it can be adapted by many others. We want this to be a very collaborative site with useful content to help FCS be a model of civics engagement.

David Klement, Executive Director
Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions

There is great news to kick off this website and newsletter debut: TurboVote is coming to the Florida College System this fall – just in time for the 2014 elections! TurboVote is a non-partisan, non-profit digital platform that makes voter registration – and voting – easy for students, especially incoming freshmen with no previous voting experience and little if any knowledge of or interest in civic affairs as they enter college for the first time. Because higher education is required by amendments to the Higher Education Act to make a good-faith effort to distribute voter registration forms to each enrolled student, an online service like TurboVote makes it relatively simple for the 28 colleges in FCS to fulfill that mandate.

And more great news: Participation in TurboVote will be offered free to participating members of the Florida College System. Normally, there is a $1,000 per college fee up-front to cover TurboVote’s services, plus a charge of $1.17 per student who registers to vote. This fee covers cost of postage to mail absentee ballots.

However, TurboVote has offered FCS a package deal: a 50 % discount for enrolling the entire system. The FCS Council of Presidents has accepted the offer. Thus a $28,000 up-front enrollment fee of $1,000 each for 28 colleges was reduced to $14,000. And that was reduced to zero when this Institute agreed to cover this cost as part of its statewide mission. At the same time, TurboVote agreed to use part of its grant from the Knight Foundation to cover the postage costs.

So, TurboVote is available to all 28 colleges in the FCS at no cost! We are rolling out this project as we speak, so continue to watch this space for updates and click here to read more about it.

David Klement, Executive Director
Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions

Author Archives: Faith Ocasio

Closing the Gap: Blog of the FCS Civics Initiative

The Initiative’s First Project: TurboVote Is Coming