According to a new report from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, the Florida state legislature’s repeated cuts to public education have made it harder for students to afford college. In fact, since 2008, Florida has slashed its higher education spending per student by 22 percent.

Access to affordable, high-quality postsecondary institutions is essential to keeping our communities economically healthy and strong. As noted by senior policy analysts with CBPP, “high levels of debt, even with a diploma, can prohibit newly-graduated individuals from starting their own businesses and becoming entrepreneurs, which of course has implications not only for their own lives, but for the communities that they live in that would have benefited from having an additional entrepreneur.”

We can do better than this.

Sign the petition today to send Florida politicians a message: we refuse to sit on the sidelines as you undermine our students’ success. We deserve lawmakers who want to improve education opportunities for Floridians – not put them out of reach.