Florida Bright Futures
After the 1996 general election, with Republicans the majority party in the Florida House of Representatives, Rep. Pruitt was able to shepherd through the Bright Futures Scholarship Act (CS/CS/SB 858 – 1997) during the 1997 legislative session. The bill was responsible for creating the state’s popular merit based aid programs for college students known as Florida Bright Futures Scholarships. These lottery funded scholarships have helped more than 300,000 Florida students attend a post-secondary institution and Pruitt has remained an ardent supporter of the program throughout his political career.
In late 2003, Senator Ken Pruitt embarked on a statewide tour of all eleven state universities and all 28 community colleges in an effort to draw up support for higher education in Florida. The Brighter Futures Express Educational Tour traveled to the various state institutions of higher learning with the intention of reminding fellow lawmakers to “keep the promise” they had made to Floridians on programs like Florida Bright Futures and Florida Prepaid. Most notably from the tour was that Pruitt traveled from school to school in a used yellow school bus. The tour concluded on March 17, 2004 with a gathering on the steps of the historic state capitol. Over 3,000 students, teachers, and parents attended the political rally which was addressed by numerous speakers, including Senator Pruitt and Miss America 2004, Ericka Dunlap. The crowd was also treated to a performance by the Florida A&M University Marching 100.
Read more about this topic: Ken Pruitt
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“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)