Charter schools. The Duval school board prepares to close a struggling charter school and transfer 70 students. Florida Times-Union. The Bradenton Herald checks in with a high-profile all-boys charter school.
Teaching. The Pinellas school district plans to spend $1 million to improve classroom management at struggling elementary schools. Tampa Bay Times.
Public opinion. School choice advocates release a poll finding strong national support for charter schools, vouchers and other educational options.
Superintendents. Volusia's superintendent, under fire, may be headed for the exits. Daytona Beach News-Journal. Palm Beach's outgoing Wayne Gent applies to lead a nearby district. Sun-Sentinel. Palm Beach Post. Hillsborough's ousted MaryEllen Elia is feted by county commissioners. Tampa Tribune.
Lawsuits. An Escambia school board member writes a column critical of the lawsuit challenging Florida school choice programs. Watchdog.org.
Bullying. An Orlando bullying victim creates a professional quality anti-bullying music video. Sentinel School Zone.
School calendars. Okaloosa's superintendent proposes doing away with early release days. Northwest Florida Daily News.
Budgets. Miami-Dade's superintendent plans to lower tax rates while boosting spending. Miami Herald. The Pasco school board trims a list of staff additions. Gradebook.
Campaigns. A liberal Democratic caucus questions Charlie Crist's education record, including his positions on school choice, and promotes Nan Rich, his Democratic gubernatorial primary opponent. Tampa Tribune. Sunshine State News. The Pinellas teachers union makes an endorsement for an open school board seat. Gradebook.
Testing. The Pinellas school district plans to scrutinize students' FCAT writing responses. Tampa Bay Times.
Discipline. The Duval school board rewrites its code of conduct. Florida Times-Union. Discipline is among the top issues for principal candidates in Lakewood Ranch. Bradenton Herald.
Cellphones. Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties adopt more relaxed policies, saying cellphones have become educational devices. Pensacola News-Journal.
Financial literacy. Florida is the first state in the nation to adopt national standards. Gradebook.
Summer. The Pasco school district takes kids outdoors with a summer adventure camp. Tampa Bay Times.
Charter schools. In an innovative arrangement, a new Miami-Dade charter school will be built with private funds but managed by the school district. Miami Herald. WPLG. A Pasco County charter for poor children with Autism is at risk of closing. Tampa Bay Times. Charter Schools USA faces a multimillion dollar verdict in a sexual abuse case. Herald. WPLG. The Duval County School Board might not renew some charter contracts. Florida Times-Union.
Tax credit scholarships. The program "is an asset to public education," an administrator at St. Petersburg Christian School writes in the Tampa Bay Times. "It should be imperative" for students in the program to take state standardized tests, former Sen. Paula Dockery writes in an opinion column.
Common core. The standards bring debate to the Hillsborough County School Board. Tampa Tribune.
Facilities. The Lee County School Board looks for ways to address enrollment growth. Fort Myers News-Press. Maintenance money is scarce, but a Hernando County elementary school is looking ways to repair its roof. Tampa Bay Times.
Single-gender schools. Scripps/Tribune writes up pending legislation creating new guidelines for the programs.
Teachers unions. The head of Orange County's teachers union is re-elected as it gears up for an impasse hearing with the school district. Orlando Sentinel.
Vitti
To appreciate the significance of what Nikolai Vitti is saying about parental choice, one must first read his resume. He’s a 36-year-old with a Harvard education doctorate who served as chief academic officer to nationally recognized Miami-Dade school superintendent Alberto Carvalho before being chosen in the fall to run the Duval County school district, the 22nd largest in the nation.
So Vitti is, by anyone’s definition, a comer on the national public education scene.
And he says this: “I support choice because I think parents need options, especially those that do not have the financial means to go to a private school.”
And this: “I just don’t believe that anyone should tell a parent where they should send their child to school. I’m vehemently opposed to limiting options, especially to parents whose children are in lower performing schools or parents who don’t have the financial means to have the same flexibility that a parent would have of means. And that’s historically what’s happened with our public education system.”
These statements, in an enlightening podcast posted to this blog on Monday, are all the more impressive given that the school district he now commands has an uneasy history with private school choice. The pressure on him to continue to wage high-profile war is certainly great. But Vitti comes from a place, and perhaps a generation, where choice is not a dirty word. He openly praises charter operators such as KIPP, even borrowing from some of their practices while in Miami, and asserts that competition is making school districts up their game. In one of his first meetings on the new job, he recommended, and the school board approved, 12 new charter schools.
Vitti, then, is owed more than a pat on the back. He is also trying to break through the political divide to encourage open-minded debate on how to make choice actually work. Toward that end, he brings legitimate concerns to the table and needs to be heard. (more…)
In our Florida roundups this week, we neglected to mention a significant and promising development – the election of a pro-school-choice candidate to the board that oversees one of the biggest school districts in Florida and the 22nd-largest in the country.
Jason Fischer, 29, easily won a seat on the Duval County School Board with a platform that included strong support for charter schools and private-school vouchers. His victory is all the more significant because he faced a strong, well-funded challenger in a 125,000-student district that has been more resistant than most to expanded school choice.
“I used the word vouchers. I used the word charter schools. I didn’t shy away from it,” Fischer told redefinED today. “I was bold about who I was and what I wanted to do.”
That message resonated in his conservative district, and Fischer has an opportunity to build on it and reach folks of all political persuasions. As a school choice advocate on a big-city school board, he can help bring a new approach to public education – one that doesn’t get hung up on outdated dividing lines that often obscure what matters most.
“I don’t care if it’s a traditional neighborhood school down the street. I don’t care if it’s a magnet school, or a charter school, or a private school,” Fischer said. “If it works best for the kid, let’s do it.”
It’s rare to find strong school choice advocates on local school boards. But in Florida, another such advocate has emerged as a viable candidate in one of the state’s biggest school districts.
Jason Fischer, 29, is one of six candidates running for the District 7 seat in Duval County, which is the county that corresponds with the city of Jacksonville. As we’ve noted before, Duval has been particularly unfriendly territory when it comes to charter schools, vouchers and tax credit scholarships. So it’s worth noting that not only is Fischer openly supportive of expanded school choice, including private options, but he’s no ordinary contender by other measures. Last month, Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed him. And yesterday, with less than three weeks to go before the Aug. 14 primary, three speaker-designates for the Florida House of Representatives did the same.
Like Glen Gilzean, a school board member and candidate in Pinellas County, Fla. who we’ve also written about (and who also snagged an endorsement from Bush), Fischer defies the caricature of the school choice supporter who wants to tear down traditional public schools. His platform is by no means limited to school choice; it includes, among other things, more focus on teacher quality and performance pay. But Fischer doesn’t shy from the potential benefits that come when more learning options are available to more kids.
“If the government has a good functioning school in an area, and people want to send their kids there, that’s fine,” Fischer told redefinED in a phone interview this week. “My goal isn’t to undercut public education. It’s to make sure parents have the widest opportunities available.”
“I think the choices will improve the quality of education of their child primarily,” he continued. “But secondarily, it will force the public school education system to improve its service level … so everyone benefits.”
Duval has struggled even more than most Florida urban districts to improve test scores for low-income students, and the School Board and one of the county’s key education advocacy groups have resisted more learning options for these students. But Fischer suggests that expanded choice can be part of the solution. (more…)
"It's unfortunate, but we saw democracy at work."
Frank Lopez, a parent of a fifth-grader at the Bank of America Learning Academy in Jacksonville, Fla., a specialty school of the Duval County School District. The Duval School Board voted Tuesday to close the school to save $309,000 annually in its $1.7 billion budget. (Source: The Florida Times-Union)
"Sometimes the district that a bureaucrat draws that says you have to go here because it works in my bus route doesn't necessarily translate into academic excellence."
Bill Dunn, a Knoxville, Tenn., Republican who is sponsoring HB 388, a school voucher initiative for low-income students in Tennessee. (Source: News Channel 5)
"The very idea that we continue to restrict children from getting a high-quality education by where they live — and perpetuate Zip Code education — is absolutely senseless."
RiShawn Biddle, editor of Dropout Nation, writing about the move of seven California families who asked a state superior court to bar the Los Angeles Unified School District from striking a new collective bargaining agreement with the union that fails to consider student test data in teacher evaluations. (Source: Dropout Nation)
