Oldest African-American school in Florida. St. Peter Claver Catholic School in Tampa is profiled by Fox 13 in Tampa. Many students attend with tax-credit scholarships.
A different take on charter school payout controversy. Red flags should have prompted more oversight from the Orange County school district, writes Adam Emerson at the Choice Words blog after doing some independent reporting.
Informing or advocating? Some question whether Volusia Superintendent Margaret Smith crossed the line in “informing” voters with automated phone calls about an upcoming tax referendum, reports the Daytona Beach New Journal.
Task force looking at tax hike. From The Florida Current: “A task force looking at construction needs of public schools is finalizing a proposal for a half mill property tax increase with the money split between traditional schools and charter schools.”
Virtual settlement. From the News Service of Florida (subscription required): “Days before an appeals court was set to hear arguments, the Duval County School Board and backers of a proposed virtual charter school have agreed to settle a legal dispute about approval of the school, an attorney said Thursday."
There’s no denying there are some bad charter schools, and that some do things that make school districts justifiably upset or rightly suspicious. School choice supporters should honestly acknowledge that and diligently help in the search for solutions. At the same time, there’s no doubt that district opposition often hinges on arguments that suggest motivations other than what’s best for kids. Take two recent examples from Florida.
In Duval County, the school board just shot down applications for two charter schools because, according to the Florida Times Union, they wanted to set up in an area where traditional public schools have 5,000 empty seats. “This would add some additional seats where we already have more than we can really manage and pay for,” the district’s chief operating officer told board members. I can’t pretend to know for sure why that part of Duval has so many under-enrolled schools. But numbers that high may reflect a combination of dwindling demand and an increasing array of learning options – phenomena that are relatively new for Florida districts and pose challenges to the historic pattern for planning new schools.
Duval received 20 charter applications this year, a record high for the third year in a row. I grew up in Duval and I’m proud of it, so it pains me to point this out: Low-income students do particularly poorly there. Next to their peers in the state’s 12 biggest districts, low-income students in Duval (the sixth biggest) ranked in the bottom three in reading in every tested grade this year, according to data recently posted on the Florida Department of Education web site. Performance like that may explain why Duval parents continue to warm to charters.
All these factors no doubt make facility planning more difficult, but officials would be wise to keep in mind that no one is forcing parents to attend these charter schools. To deny new charters based solely on traditional school enrollment patterns, then, is to appear bureaucratically heavy-handed and insensitive to the needs of students. It also, quite arbitrarily, denies parents more options.
In Volusia County, meanwhile, the superintendent recommended last month that the school board reject all nine applications for new charters. Ultimately, the board turned down four and the other five withdrew. (more…)
