Security at schools: The Broward County School District is spending $621,000 for a surveillance system that recognizes people, and watches and remembers their movements. The 116 cameras will be installed at 36 schools, mostly high schools. One is expected to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people died in an attach last Feb. 14. Sun Sentinel. The Duval County School Board approves the creation of threat assessment teams for all schools. WJAX. Orange County is still trying to hire enough officers to cover all schools. Orlando Sentinel. South Florida parents and students talk about whether Florida's new school safety requirements are making students feel safer in their schools. WLRN.
Teacher turnover: Teachers are leaving the St. Johns County School District at the highest rate in three years, according to district data. During the 2017-2018 school year, 243 of 3,216 teachers resigned, a rate of 7.5 percent. St. Augustine Record. WJAX. The Lake County School District has a teacher turnover rate of about 15 percent a year, and seven schools have rates of 40 percent or higher. District officials say they are working on a strategy to improve retention. Daily Commercial. (more…)
Another game shooting: One person is dead and two others wounded after a shooting as fans exited the Raines-Lee high school football game in Jacksonville on Friday night. No one has been arrested, and deputies say the shootings are gang-related. Duval County Superintendent Diana Greene was at the game, and calls the shooting "unacceptable. This is a community issue. I need parents, students to stand up. If you see something, say something." Greene says she and school district officials will be discussing changes needed to be made to ensure the safety of all students. Florida Times-Union. WJAX. WJXT. Backpacks and book bags are now banned from Orange and Seminole counties high school football games for security reasons, district officials announce. Orlando Sentinel. Bag searches and metal detector scans are among the new security measures that were unveiled at high school football games in Palm Beach County over the weekend. Palm Beach Post.
School security: Legislators from both parties say the state should take another look at the formula used to determine how security funds are distributed to schools, especially small independent schools. Gov. Rick Scott also has asked the Legislature to revise a law to allow unclaimed money from the armed guardian program to be used for other school district security needs. But House Speaker-elect Jose Oliva, R-Hialeah, and incoming Senate President-elect Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, both say the money should stay in the armed guardian fund. redefinED. Ocala Police Department officials say they have clarified with Marion County school officials how to notify parents after an emergency at a school. School officials complained that they were prohibited by police from notifying parents for more than four hours after a gun was found in a student's backpack at West Port High School last week. Ocala Star-Banner. The Citrus County School District is scheduling training for students in the ALICE program, which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate, to respond to school intruders. Citrus County Chronicle. Damien Kelly, the state's first director of Safe Schools, is profiled. TCPalm. (more…)
State responds in suit: Lawyers for the state are urging the Florida Supreme Court to dismiss a case challenging the constitutionality of the way Florida funds its education system instead of sending it back to a lower court for further review. Last December, an appeals court decided that a trial court correctly ruled that the state constitution's requirement for a "high quality" and "efficient" public school system was political, and not measurable. In April, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case. Gradebook.
Closed board meetings: Since last year, the Lee County School Board has been holding meetings the public is not invited to after its regular board meetings. The meetings are considered critique sessions, and board attorney Keith Martin says members carefully avoid discussing any issues that could later be voted on. "There have been a couple of occasions where they have gotten close to that type of issue, and I have had to say, 'No, Sunshine Law. Get back to the proper discussions,' " says Martin. Barbara Petersen, president of the nonprofit Florida First Amendment Foundation, says these meetings might not technically violate state law, but they could cause a public perception problem. Fort Myers News-Press. (more…)
Immigrants and GED: The Miami-Dade County School Board has ordered a review of the way the district educates immigrant students. The review was approved about a month after newspaper reports detailed how arriving teens with limited English skills were often pushed into adult education programs, where they then prepared to get a high school diploma through the GED program. Critics of that process say those students are steered away from regular high schools because school officials think they'll have a negative impact on graduation rates. More than 1,000 of the 5,000 immigrant teens who arrived this year ended up in Spanish-language GED programs. Board members gave administrators until September to conduct the review and report back. Miami Herald. About 200 immigrant youths under the age of 19 who tried to enroll in Collier County schools were turned away and pushed toward a GED degree, online programs and workforce training sessions, according to a lawsuit filed on their behalf by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Here's the story of one, 17-year-old Nehemy Antoine, a Haitian immigrant who became a U.S. citizen. Teacher Project, Naples Daily News.
School security: A Palm Beach grand jury's suggestion that the school district dip into its reserves to pay for school resource officers is dismissed by school officials as a simplistic and unrealistic solution to a complicated problem. They say the reserve fund as a percentage of the annual budget is already lower than that of most Florida districts, and that reserves should not be used for everyday expenses like new employees and higher salaries. Palm Beach Post. While Sanibel, Fort Myers or Cape Coral city officials have agreed to contribute financially to place resource officers in schools in their cities, officials in Estero and Bonita Springs are still questioning whether it's their responsibility. They think school protection ought to fall under what they already pay the county for the sheriff to police their cities. Naples Daily News. Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods drops the cost to supply resource officers for schools, and if the city of Ocala can't do the same the school board is likely to contract with the sheriff. The board meets Monday to finalize its decision. Ocala Star-Banner. Officials from the St. Johns County School District and sheriff's office talk about how the county will comply with the state's school security mandate. St. Augustine Record. (more…)
New superintendents: Mark Mullins, the Brevard County School District's chief operating officer, is named superintendent. The school board was scheduled to whittle down a list of 12 candidates and conduct interviews next week. Instead, all five board members selected Mullins as the only candidate everyone wanted as a finalist, and chose to forgo the rest of the process. Mullins, who has worked for the district since 1994, replaces Desmond Blackburn, who is leaving this summer to become chief executive officer of the national education nonprofit New Teacher Center. Florida Today. Space Coast Daily. The Manatee County School Board is negotiating with Cynthia Saunders, deputy superintendent of instructional services, to serve as interim superintendent. She'll take over temporarily for Diana Greene, who leaves July 1 for the same job in Duval County. Bradenton Herald. Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Old superintendent: In a 3-2 vote, the Hernando County School Board has fired Superintendent Lori Romano. Board member Beth Narverud initiated the move, saying she was concerned about "a multitude of misinformation, half-truths and urgent, last-minute decisions thrust upon" the board by Romano. Linda Prescott, who cast the deciding vote, says Romano's firing of all 47 teachers at the struggling Moton Elementary School without first notifying the board or teachers union convinced her it was time for a change. Board attorney Dennis Alfonso says the board will explain its reasoning in an official termination letter at its June 26 meeting. Tampa Bay Times. Earlier Tuesday, a lawyer apparently representing Romano threatened legal action against school board members Susan Duval and Narverud for "failing to meet" the requirements of Romano's evaluation. "Several of you have attempted to publicly humiliate and needlessly and irreparably injure the reputation of the superintendent," wrote Kathryn McHale. Gradebook. (more…)
School shooting video: A circuit court judge rules that video taken outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the shootings Feb. 14 that killed 17 people must be made public. Several news organizations had sued the Broward County Sheriff's Office and the school board for refusing to release the video, arguing that it was crucial in analyzing law enforcement’s response. The judge ruled that prosecutors didn't prove how releasing the video could hamper the ongoing investigation, but delayed the release until Thursday to give the sheriff and school board a chance to appeal. Sun-Sentinel. Associated Press. Miami Herald.
Walkout Wednesday: At least 2,500 U.S. schools expect students to stage a walkout Wednesday to protest the shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14 and call for stricter controls on guns. The walkouts are expected to start at 10 a.m. and, in many cases, last 17 minutes to honor each of the 17 murdered victims. Sun-Sentinel. Students around the state plan to participate in the walkout, and schools are deciding how they will deal with it. Fort Myers News-Press. Bradenton Herald. Gainesville Sun. Northwest Florida Daily News. St. Augustine Record. The 74. Six things to know about the National Student Walkout. Education Week. About 500,000 people are expected to congregate in Washington, D.C., March 24 in the March For Our Lives rally calling for school safety and stricter gun laws, and other rallies will be held in cities around the country, including Parkland. Sun-Sentinel.
New education bills: The school safety bill and the K-12 and higher education bills got most of the attention, but other education-related bills also were passed in the Legislature. Here are some of them. Gradebook. Private schools that accept state scholarship students will have some new rules to follow under the new education bill, H.B. 7055. The state will now be permitted to visit all private schools, starting in 2019, and provisions will make it harder for those schools to hide criminal convictions of owners or file phony fire inspection reports. But they'll still be able to hire teachers without college degrees. Orlando Sentinel. H.B. 7055 also boosts school construction funding for K-12 schools and higher education institutions. News Service of Florida. The Legislature created a scholarship program to help bullied students move to private schools. It's the first program of its kind in the United States. Will it start a national trend? TrustED. U.S. News & World Report. Here's a recap of the biggest issues in the Legislature this year, as well as some of the bills that passed and failed. News Service of Florida. Associated Press. News Service of Florida. (more…)
