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College semesters are winding down…but it’s back to school for some powerful Florida lawmakers. As Matt Galka tells us, the man controlling the senate for the next two years is taking a school swing around the state with improvements on his mind.

Incoming Senate President Joe Negron sat with freshman engineering major Sebrenia Coleman in a computer lab on Florida A&M’s campus. He wanted to get a better sense of what the Tampa native was working on in school.

It’s all part of Negron’s statewide university tour.  He and other lawmakers are trying to figure out what school’s around the state need.

“The laboratory that you just saw, that we had that was just remodeled this semester, was the kind of lab we need all over the campus for 10 thousand, nine thousand, eight thousand students, you need more than one modern lab,” said FAMU President Elmira Mangum.

Other lawmakers on the tour were happy that students were honest about some of their struggles. Doctoral student Shamarial Roberson told the legislators that course load and finances were tough to balance.

“It’s very difficult for me to stay up at night, research, and work in the daytime, so I can support my family and go to school here,” she said.

Incoming Senate minority leader Oscar Braynon said he hopes his colleagues are paying attention to what the students at different schools are going through.

“They got the same grades and the same test scores, ye the results are coming back differently, there are some things that are different, and that’s the stuff I wanted to come out today,” said Sen. Braynon (D-Miami).

Negron says he knows that each school is unique and faces different challenges.

“As we’re making budget decisions and determining what’s going to be on the PECO list, I think it’s important to have actual facts about every single university, and that’s why we researched it and that’s why I’m taking notes, specifically, on each university,” he said.

The tour wraps up Thursday, Lawmakers will have seen 12 campuses spanning from the Panhandle to Miami when it finishes.