Jefferson County's newest school superintendent, Marianne Arbulu, told the state Board of Education she wants to turn things around.

Next week, the Florida Board of Education could make history.

For the first time, it may be poised to approve a plan that would convert all the schools in a single district to charters.

The district in question is Jefferson County, a small rural community east of Tallahassee, which operates a single elementary school and one middle-high school. Both have been mired in academic turmoil for the past decade, with school grades that languished as D's and F's.

This school year, the state board grew frustrated with an endless cycle of district-managed turnaround plans, and demanded the local school board return with a proposal that would either turn its schools over to outside operators or close them.

This week, WFSU reports, the school board opted for charter conversions in a 4-1 vote. That plan will come before the state board when it meets Thursday in Gainesville. Now, a big question is whether it can find an operator willing to serve just over 700 students — more than 80 percent of them children of color, nearly all of them economically disadvantaged.

The public radio station reports: (more…)

A school district in rural North Florida is in dire straits, prompting state education officials to grapple with unprecedented questions. What happens when a school district can no longer operate its own schools?

That possibility came into view Tuesday, when the state Board of Education, for the third time, rejected a plan by the Jefferson County school district to turn around a persistently struggling school.

Jefferson County Elementary School is currently rated a D under the state grading system, and hasn't earned a C since 2009. Citing that grim track record, lingering staff vacancies and an ongoing financial emergency, Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said, "I am truly of the opinion that the district lacks the ability" to turn around the situation on its own.

Florida K-12 Schools Chancellor Hershel Lyons explains Jefferson County's struggles to the state Board of Education.

She asked the district to choose a new plan from among three options: Recruit a charter school operator to take over the elementary school, bring in an outside company to operate it, or close the school and send students elsewhere.

"I think when we do one of those three things, our students in Jefferson County will be the beneficiaries, and that is the ultimate goal, and what we are charged with doing," Stewart said.

The district only has one elementary school, so any of those options would take it out of the business of running elementary schools altogether.

The future of Jefferson's combined middle-high school is also in question. The state board previously approved its turnaround plan, but Stewart said she had doubts the district was following through, and that it hadn't hired a principal with bona fide turnaround experience. As a result, she said, the board might consider similar options for Jefferson's secondary students at a future meeting.

Jefferson County is an outlier in many ways. It has the lowest student achievement in the state. Hershel Lyons, the state's chancellor for K-12 schools, said more than half of its high school students had been forced to repeat more than two grades. Jefferson has one of the state's highest poverty rates. Its student population has shrunk by an unparalleled 30 percent in five years. It is now Florida's smallest school district. It has the highest rate of private school enrollment in the state, and other parents have moved their kids to neighboring districts.

Despite having the state's second-highest rate of per-pupil spending, it's pulling itself back from the brink of financial crisis. Its finances are under the supervision of a volunteer emergency board. (more…)