StudentsFirst partners with Gov. Rick Scott to reform schools in Florida
StudentsFirst will engage on the ground in many states and regions, but we put our first stake down in Florida yesterday. I announced with Governor Rick Scott that we will help his new administration push a bold package of education reforms. Florida has made significant progress turning around schools in the last decade with strong laws requiring, for example, that every school receive a letter grade. Governor Scott shares our belief that not only do schools need report cards, but so do teachers, so that great teachers can be supported, recognized, and retained with professional salaries and protected from lay-offs. Our goal is that every student has a highly effective teacher.
The school we toured today is a great example of “what gets measured, gets done.” Florida International Academy is a charter that received an F grade in its first year. But principal Sonia Mitchell is one smart lady. She figured it out and by the second year the school had an A grade and has retained it. And parents seem very involved.
I was shocked, though, to see what hurdles this public charter school has endured while achieving high marks. Charter schools in Florida, like almost all states, receive no dollars for facilities, a huge inequity since they are public schools. Florida International Academy was housed in substandard facilities and has been trying to move to a nice campus with an old church so they could expand to serve 600 students. But the land purchase and remodeling required complicated financing. The good news is that a thrifty and creative team like Sonia Mitchell’s, with help from her board that includes parents, and some helpful non-profits, figured out how to build a facility at one-third the cost of similar space in a traditional district school. We should ensure all schools can use dollars that efficiently.
The bad news is that the new school almost got shut down before it opened because they waited 9 months to get permits and could not start building. Apparently, in this district, if you do not have your school building by a certain point in the summer, you lose your charter, so four days before the deadline, still with no permit, school leaders brought in modular classrooms, and that’s where the kids are excelling this school year, in temporary trailers on a construction site.
The story will have a happy ending. The new school opens in a few weeks, but think how well Sonia and her teachers will be doing when they can focus all of their attention full-time on students. So, I will be helping Governor Scott push some plans to make it easier for excellent schools, like Florida International Academy, to put students first. If you live in Florida, we’ll be sharing specific proposals we hope you will push with your state legislators.
