In 2002,the people of Florida adopted an amendment to the state Constitution that mandated the reduction of class sizes.

Beginning in the 2010-11 school year, classes from prekindergarten to grade 3 were capped at 18; grades 4-8 were capped at 22; grades 9-12 were limited to 25.

Ever since, the state’s politicians—led by Jeb Bush—have sought to eliminate or roll back that expensive mandate.

Jeb Bush is trying a new tactic now. He has devised a devious plan, which offers to raise teschers’ Rock bottom Salaries in exchange for killing the class size limits.

Scott Maxwell of the zorlando Sentinel quickly spotted the sneaky trade off.

“So, news that the leader of Jeb Bush’s education foundation has drafted a constitutional amendment to boost pay sounds great … until you read the fine print.

“That’s when you see the proposal only provides money for teacher raises if Floridians first vote to lift the cap on class sizes and agree to stuff more children in Florida classrooms.

“And even then, there’s no guarantee of how much in raises teachers would get.

“In other words, if you want to maybe treat your teachers like something better than dirt, you have to first agree to go back to the days where you treated your kids like dirt.

“Happy voting, everyone!

“In some regards, the proposal by Patricia Levesque — the head of Bush’s Excellence in Education foundation and a member of the state’s Constitution Revision Commission — is no surprise.

“Bush hated the idea of forcing the state to spend more on smaller classes.

“Back when he was governor, he opposed the 2002 amendment and announced that, if voters passed it, he had “devious plans” to undermine it.

“Actually, Bush didn’t announce his devious plans. He was caught divulging them to allies by a reporter with a tape recorder whom Bush hadn’t spotted in the room.

“So now, 15 years later, we have Devious Plans 2.0.

“Levesque says there’s nothing devious about her plans. She simply wants to give school districts more “flexibility” in meeting the class-size requirements, by allowing them to use averages.

“Your kid’s math class could have 36 students as long as another math class has 13.

“She says the teacher-pay part of her proposal is simply about making sure the money stays in the schools, the way voters want.

“Frankly, I don’t buy that.

“I think the teacher-raise proposal is just a gimmick — that Levesque knows there’s no way 60 percent of Floridians would vote for bigger class sizes. So she tucked a sweetener in there … a way to let backers run a campaign on a popular topic (raising teacher pay) instead of the real goal (cramming more kids in each classroom).

“If raising teacher pay were truly the goal, we’d see an amendment that proposed just that. But that’s not what this is.

“Theoretically, Levesque is right when she says implementing the class-size amendment requires flexibility.

“But we have been duped before on that front.

“In fact, legislators have flexed the intent right out of the law.

“The 2002 amendment, after all, was clear. It capped class sizes at 25 students for high school, 22 students in fourth through eighth grades and 18 in pre-K through third.

“Still, Florida schools are full of classrooms that have 28, 32 and 35 kids.

“How? Lawmakers created loopholes the size of Iowa (which, by the way, also pays its teachers more than Florida).

“Lawmakers exempted electives and extracurricular classes from the caps — which sounded OK at first. I mean, 30 students in a PE class or 40 in chorus sounds reasonable.

“But then lawmakers began reclassifying every class you can imagine as electives.

“American literature became an “extracurricular.”

“So did French. And Spanish. And marine biology.”

Just start with the assumption that a Jeb Bush and his so-called Foundation for Educational Excellence Don’t care a whit about students or teachers or education, and you will get the picture.