3 “education” bills in Senate

Three bills simply entitled “education” were filed by Senator Nancy Detert yesterday. (Detert is this session’s chair of the committee on education Pre-K – 12. She wasn’t around last year, so we don’t have a voting record for her on last session’s deceptively-named “academic freedom” bills.) Take a look at the bills for yourself: SB 756, SB 758, SB 760. All three say the exact same thing:

A bill to be entitled
2 An act relating to education; expressing the
3 legislative intent to revise laws relating to
4 education; providing an effective date.
5
6 Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Florida:
7
8 Section 1. The Legislature intends to revise laws relating
9 to education.
10 Section 2. This act shall take effect upon becoming a law.

What does that mean? Are these bills just placeholders, with more detailed bill text to follow at a later date? If anyone has more knowledge about how this kind of stuff works, please let us know.

EDITED TO ADD: Just as i suspected, these are probably “shell bills.” Here is a nice description:

Due to the short deadlines the Legislature must operate under, sometimes there isn’t enough time to get a bill written in final form before the deadline for introducing all bills. If it isn’t introduced by the deadline, it can’t be considered. In these cases, a shell bill is introduced.

…

Later, when the bill is considered by a committee, the author will have a completed version to offer as a “committee substitute”.

…

Sometimes shell bills are used deliberately as part of a strategy to get something passed, usually something that would generate controversy or stir up opposition if it was known about beforehand. No one knows what the bill really is until the committee meeting.

One problem with this potential explanation is that there is plenty of time right now to get a complete bill filed, so “short deadlines” doesn’t seem like a plausible explanation here. We’ll just have to keep an eye on these bills to see how things turn out, I guess.