The House passed its version of the reform legislation early in the 60-day session<\/a> that ended Friday. But the Senate version, after sailing through two committees, stalled and never got a floor vote.<\/p>\nThe senator who sponsored the bill couldn\u2019t be reached this week and the spokesperson for the Senate president declined to comment.<\/p>\n
But Rep. Toby Overdorf, R-Palm City, the House sponsor, said he thinks Senate leadership put the brakes on the proposal, though he wasn\u2019t sure why, and said he was \u201cextremely disappointed\u201d in the outcome. The legislation, he said, would help more Florida students pass the national nursing exam and eventually work as nurses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had identified a major flaw and we felt like we were on our way to fixing it and unfortunately the powers that be in the Senate are allowing this flaw to continue,\u201d Overdorf said.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers in both the House and Senate said the bills were needed to protect students from schools that charge tens of thousands in tuition and fees but put out graduates who cannot pass the required exam and so cannot work.<\/p>\n
Florida faces a dire nursing shortage \u2014 the state is expected to need 60,000 new workers by 2035 \u2014 but has among the country\u2019s worst passage rates on the National Council Licensure Exam, which graduates must master.<\/p>\n
Nationwide, about 87% of first-time test-takers passed the test, often called the NCLEX, last year. But in Florida, just 82% of would-be registered nurses scored high enough to obtain licensure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a disappointment because we remain at the bottom of the pile in terms of NCLEX pass rates in the country and that\u2019s not something to be proud of,\u201d said Willa Hill, executive director of the Florida Nurses Association, which lobbied in support of the legislation.<\/p>\n
At Florida\u2019s high-performing nursing programs, including those at Seminole State College and the University of Central Florida, well over 90% of graduates pass the exam on their first attempt. But students from for-profit institutions are far less likely to pass the test than their peers at public schools.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s Board of Nursing once had broad latitude to approve, or deny, new nursing programs and oversee existing ones. But Florida lawmakers in 2009 eased regulations, inviting new institutions to enter the market. Within five years, the number of nursing programs in the state more than doubled. But many were for-profit schools that churned out students whose pricey degrees fell short of what they needed to become licensed nurses.<\/p>\n
Overdorf\u2019s legislation sought to weed out programs where few students are successful the first time they take the test, as well as offer some relief to graduates who fall short.<\/p>\n
The proposal would have allowed nursing board staff to conduct unannounced site visits, for instance, and require programs with NCLEX passage rates of less than 30% to refund the tuition of any student who fails to pass the exam.<\/p>\n
The House passed its version of the bill nearly unanimously in mid-January.<\/p>\n
The Senate\u2019s version breezed through its first committee vote. But after the second committee approved a substitute in late February, progress came to a halt.<\/p>\n
Overdorf and Sen. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, championed similar legislation aimed at improving nursing programs last year. Both chambers passed the House bill with broad bipartisan support.<\/p>\n
But DeSantis vetoed the bill, writing that he feared it would discourage programs from accepting students, push them to focus on test preparation over career training and hurt the state\u2019s ability to recruit and keep nursing programs and directors.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, bills focused on eliminating or improving low-performing programs never made it to the House or Senate floor.<\/p>\n
Hoping this year\u2019s legislation would win the governor\u2019s approval, Overdorf said he worked closely with DeSantis\u2019 office and made changes to the bill that were intended, in part, to ensure its passage.<\/p>\n
The upper chamber\u2019s version, sponsored by Harrell, differed in a few key ways from its House counterpart. For instance, the Senate proposal would have required programs whose NCLEX passage rates fall 10 percentage points or more below the national average to offer three-month \u201cpreceptorship\u201d programs to graduates, which would include job shadowing; clinical and nonclinical training; and patient care in hospital settings. The low-performing programs also would have had to offer free remediation to graduates who didn\u2019t pass the NCLEX.<\/p>\n
More than 70 programs across the state posted passage rates in 2025 that were 10 percentage points or more below the national average for first-time test-takers on the exam for registered nurses. Those schools included Riggs College of Allied Health in Longwood, where just 69% of graduates scored high enough to work as nurses.<\/p>\n
Harrell could not be reached for comment this week.<\/p>\n
Some private school leaders felt the legislation targeted them unfairly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is focused on closing as many private schools as possible,\u201d said Bob Harris, a lobbyist and attorney who spoke on behalf of the Florida Association of Independent Nursing Schools during a Senate committee meeting last month.<\/p>\n
Harris said he thought the legislation would worsen Florida\u2019s nursing shortage by reducing seats in programs across the state.<\/p>\n
Melanie Leyva, a lobbyist for Chamberlain University, said it takes time for struggling programs to get back on track. The legislation allowed programs with low NCLEX passage rates to sit on probation for two years before facing closure and that\u2019s not enough, she said.<\/p>\n
Chamberlain\u2019s two campuses in Jacksonville and South Florida posted passage rates of 79% and 72%, trailing the national average, in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a school falls below benchmarks and gets on probation it has to do a lot of work to improve,\u201d Leyva said.<\/p>\n
Harrell pushed back on the notion that her bill was designed to target private schools. Graduates from a few public campuses also perform poorly on the NCLEX, she said, pointing to Tallahassee State College as an example. At the capital city school, just 70% of students passed the exam for registered nurses on their first try last year, well below the state and national averages.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this bill will make a huge difference and it is geared not to private nursing schools \u2014 it is geared to all nursing schools,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Overdorf is term-limited in the House and can\u2019t seek re-election this year, but has filed to run for Harrell\u2019s Senate seat in 2028 when her term ends and she\u2019s ineligible to run for another. He said he hopes one of his House colleagues will pick up the mantle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would hope somebody would be able to pass some legislation to have some oversight over nursing programs to ensure the quality and safety of care for citizens in Florida,\u201d Overdorf said.<\/p>\n
anmartin@orlandosentinel.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After gaining near-unanimous approval in the Florida House, legislation aimed at strengthening state oversight of nursing schools died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,115,139,141,140,99,109],"class_list":["post-196171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-politics","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}