Around the state: Mentors are needed for a program in Citrus, history standards stir controversy nationwide, a change in plans at the newest high school in Palm Beach, back-to-school giveaways in Duval and Orange and new leadership in Lee. Here are details about those stories and other developments from the state's districts, private schools, colleges and universities:
Broward: The new schools superintendent here is no stranger to South Florida public schools. Dr. Peter Licata grew up in Pompano Beach and spent three decades as a teacher, principal and administrator in Palm Beach County. WLRN.
Palm Beach: A change in plans for this county's newest high school will result in a new artificial turf football field for about $1.4 million. Dr. Joaquín García High will be just the fourth public high school in the district with a turf field. When the district staff made the change just six weeks before the football team's home opener, they didn't allow the normal bidding process to keep the price competitive, saying that they did not have time. Crews from Pirtle Construction were installing the base for a natural sod football field at the school — the district's first new high school in 18 years — when the school board approved the artificial turf on Wednesday. Palm Beach Post.
Orange: With school starting in a few weeks in this county, events and giveaways abound to make sure students are all set for their first day. This weekend, hundreds of families showed up at Eccleston Elementary for a literacy and book giveaway that was hosted in part by Need to Read Inc., a nonprofit that regularly hosts literacy events to emphasize the importance of reading at a young age. “We have to start early with our children because low literacy leads to all kinds of detrimental outcomes,” said Pastor Roderick Zak. WKMG.
Duval: One mother who lost her son is making sure kids have what they need to have a good school year. For the second year in a row, there will be a back-to-school giveaway in honor of Rashaud Fields, set for noon on July 29 at The Legends Center on Soutel Drive. At least 200 backpacks will be given away, as well as school supplies. There will also be food, drinks, games and a chance for kids to participate in flag football and a basketball tournament. News 4 Jax.
Lee: There are 14 new principals in Lee county schools. Ft. Myers News-Press.
Citrus: Mentors are needed for the 2023-24 school year for a program called Men Building Men and Women Building Women. The goal is to provide young men and women in Citrus with positive, influential role models who are willing and committed to giving them leadership, guidance and direction to become successful in life. “You know they’re going through a rough time, and a lot of them have poor attendance and poor grades … and for some, school just isn’t their priority because of other things that are going on,” said mentor Curtis Lewis. Citrus Chronicle.
Controversial history standards: In the wake of the Florida Department of Education's new standards on African American history that suggest slaves benefited from skills they learned while enslaved, the department issued a statement that offered examples of 16 historic figures they said fit that description. But Vice President Kamala Harris said extremists want to "replace history with lies" as she traveled to Florida on Friday. Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and her colleague Leo Casey on Saturday issued a joint statement. Tampa Bay Times. Miami Herald. WFTV. NPR.
Shelter bill: The U.S. House last week passed a bill to bar the use of public K-12 school facilities to provide shelter for migrants seeking asylum in the United States. The bill is known as the "School Not Shelters Act," and if enacted into law, public schools and public higher education institutions would risk losing federal funding if they provide shelter to migrants who have not been admitted into the country. Florida Phoenix.
University and college news: Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday that Michael White was appointed to the Board of Trustees at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, or FAMU. White's confirmation is subject to confirmation by the Florida Senate. White is set to replace Michael Dubose, whose term expired in January. “As a proud Rattler, I am honored to have received this distinguished appointment by Governor DeSantis. I look forward to contributing to developing the University’s policies and programs to ensure they build upon the legacy of FAMU,” said White. WXTL. University of Florida Researcher Felipe Ferrao says Florida could become a global hub for coffee research. That's why he's leading studies into the caffeinated beverage and the plants that produce it. Main Street Daily News.
Opinions on schools: Should the state's political leaders care what people in other states think of our education culture debates? Yes, and here's why. Paul Cottle, Bridge to Tomorrow.
In the film Elvis, Col. Tom Parker, portrayed by Tom Hanks, serves as the Iago-like villain. Parker begins the film by denying rumors that he financially exploited Presley as his manager and that he worked him to death. He didn’t kill Presley, Parker claims, he made him.
If anything, Parker implies, you fans killed him. Parker proceeds to serve as both a character and narrator in the tragic tale of the King of Rock and Roll.
Watching Hanks play Parker reminded me of unreliable narrators in the K-12 policy debate, specifically those who are perpetrating an enormous amount of damage to the institution while claiming others are “destroying public education.”
Unlike Elvis, which falls on your author’s very-good-to-almost-great film admiration spectrum, American public education wouldn’t do so well on the Rotten Tomatoes aggregation of critics and public reviews, especially lately. Gallup polling data show the King was still alive during the peak of public confidence in public education, but it’s been sliding ever since. Today, there is bipartisan consensus that we lack confidence in public education by either “a great deal” or “quite a lot.”
No mystery surrounds the recent swoon evident in the Gallup data above: Controversy swirls over COVID-19 school closures, masking and curriculum. Enter Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation for Teachers, to play the role of Col. Parker.
Given that public education is safely ensconced in every state constitution, no one is going to be “destroying” it. Weingarten, however, has shown an expansive capacity to damage both the system and the students within it. And like Parker, she is anxious to avoid taking responsibility.
Weingarten repeatedly claimed to be “working hard” to reopen schools while lobbying hard to do the opposite. In 2021, Weingarten’s union lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on controversial school re-opening guidance, even writing some of the text.
Many school systems both in the United States and across the world had reopened by this point, and many had never closed at all. The guidelines, however, recommended that schools in 90% of American counties adhere to strict guidelines which drew fire from both parents and many scientists.
“Zoom school” provided a window for parents into curriculum, and many did not like what they saw. Battles over public-school curriculum are ongoing, but after COVID-19, they escalated.
Weingarten could have taken the stance that the role of public schools is to teach state academic standards to calm the waters of controversy. Instead, she described parental concerns as “contrived” and claimed that her organization stood ready to defend teachers teaching “real history.”
Meanwhile, the National Education Association approved a resolution to implement Critical Race Theory in K-12 curriculum. I don’t have a dog in this curriculum fight. The way to resolve curriculum fights is to tolerate diversity so that people can choose the types of schools they want. But Randi Weingarten and company oppose that proposition with every fiber of their being. This works to the detriment of teachers, students, and families.
The United States is a pluralistic society and ought to have a pluralistic school system to reflect that reality. The process of having a one-size-fits-all system regarding controversial issues such as student health and curriculum not only is bad for families; it will continue to represent a source of unending cultural conflict.
In the end, you judge a tree by the fruit is produces, and here the record on shut-downs and curriculum wars has produced entirely rotten produce. Public school enrollment dropped by 1.2 million students, and students are demonstrating enormous academic and behavioral deficits.
Years after Presley’s death, a judge ruled that Parker’s management of his business affairs had been “extortionate … unethical and poorly handled.” The same could be said for the education union’s influence over public education.
American families have been caught in a trap of never-ending conflict over public schools, but they can – and many have – walked out. Families ought to be able to access an equitable share of funding when they do so.
Col. Weingarten didn’t kill public school culture wars; she made them.
Randi Weingarten is president of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, which represents teachers, paraprofessionals and school-related personnel.
Editor’s note: Nathan Cunneen, author of this commentary, is a communications associate at the American Federation for Children. You can read a redefinED profile of Cunneen here.
On Saturday night, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten published a tweet that sounded suspiciously like an endorsement of school choice.
While Twitter (quite hilariously) went wild with quote tweets and comments mock celebrating this “endorsement,” anyone paying attention to the school choice wave knows that Randi Weingarten does not practice what she preaches, and that will unlikely change.
Teachers’ unions, with their vice-grip power over the Democratic Party, remain one of the largest obstacles to education freedom in the United States. Randi Weingarten, like her predecessors, has made her priorities crystal clear, stating that “the job of a union is to protect its members rights, and that’s exactly what @AFTunion will always do.”
Fair enough, but what about when protecting union members’ directly conflicts with what’s best for students? Too often that’s what happens when students remain locked into the public education system that the union controls.
Instead, school choice seeks to liberate students by granting them access to the funds meant to educate them, so that their families can make education decisions that match their needs, and because “ZIP code shouldn’t determine whether or not you have resources and a quality education.”
The reason why a teachers union president would abandon her usual buzz phrases in favor of language consistently used by the school choice movement is clear: teachers union reputation is at an all-time low after a year of terrible decisions, and the entire country wants choice right now.
In the last year and a half, teachers unions have fought to keep schools closed, even when private schools all over the country opened safely. They have induced the CDC to maintain those school closures, often against medical evidence. And they have spent seven-figure sums running ads in an attempt to save their slipping reputation.
Meanwhile, the educational quality of millions of kids is still determined geographic or financial realities.
As a result, just as teacher union support reaches all-time lows, support for school choice has reached all-time highs. June polling shows that overall support for school choice has reached 74%, with 83% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats. But these monstrous numbers aren’t purely the result of teachers’ unions failings, they’re driven by the growing awareness that school choice is what’s right for families, and the key to success for many students.
I was one of them.
For 10 years, I was blessed to receive an amazing education through the help of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. Through my experiences in both public and private schools, it became clear that students do not all learn the same, and a public school environment is not what’s best for every kid.
Thankfully, the lawmakers of Florida gave me and my family an opportunity to choose where I went to school, an opportunity that changed my life and would not have been possible without the assistance of a scholarship. Now I am the first in my family to graduate from college.
I’m not the only one.
Consider, also, the story of Peter Orlowski, who credits a scholarship with making a new school possible, a school where he wasn’t constantly bullied. Consider Damyah Joyner, whose high school Tax Credit Scholarship led to an academic and athletic scholarship for college. Ours are among the countless stories of how educational freedom changes lives for the better. All across America, millions are benefitting because bold lawmakers put children before adult-centric special interests.
According to numerous studies, school choice leads to improved graduation rates and test scores among students. In an Urban Institute analysis of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, recipients were shown to be up to 99% more likely to attend four-year colleges and 45% more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.
This evidence shows that while poking fun on Twitter is sometimes entertaining, and this was certainly a blunder for Ms. Weingarten, we must remember that this is serious, especially for families facing financial hardship this year. More choice means more opportunities for the families who truly need it.
Following the most tumultuous school year in modern history, and considering the teachers union’s actions amidst it, two conclusions must be reached. First, America’s education system must change, and second, school choice is the best way to change it.
Putting families and students in control of their educational future is not only the right thing to do; it will correct the institutional focus of supporting a worsening education system to supporting students.
Given her twitter account, maybe Randi Weingarten is realizing this. If not, she should.
