The community takeover of Lake Wales public schools feels so much like an educational Camelot that it is easy to forget this romance was spawned by Florida’s charter school conversion law. It’s also easy to forget that its local benefactor was a powerfully connected Democrat.
The account of these schools and their champion, Robin Gibson, so ably reported this week by redefinED associate editor Sherri Ackerman, is a poignant reminder that school reform and school choice can indeed start in the homes of parents who think children are not getting what they deserve. Gibson, an attorney who helped run campaigns for former Democratic governors Lawton Chiles and Bob Graham, and was once chairman of the state university Board of Regents, thought his own children and the tiny city of Lake Wales were being hampered by public schools that were treated like stepchildren. So he began an effort, in 2002, to convert them to charters.
“I don’t think there’s anything partisan about it, if you’re for a first-class education system, ’’ Gibson says today. “I think everyone’s for that. I’m an advocate for what works, and I’m an advocate for educating the entire demographic.’’
Unsurprisingly, there was resistance. But Gibson and his friends brought sophistication and enterprise to the effort, taking over five schools in 2004 and starting a sixth from scratch. The charter campuses of Lake Wales now enroll 3,800 students – ranking them ahead of 15 of the state’s school districts in size – and the academic success has put the schools on track to be designated “high performing” under charter law.
The Lake Wales conversions provide educational as well as political lessons.
The Polk district was hardly enthusiastic about the idea. But educators will be educators, and so the first charter system superintendent was a former district area supervisor whose wife is now a school board member. She says the experience opened her eyes to the way education is being customized through expanding school choice.
Politically, this charter tale is distinctly bipartisan and probably ahead of its time. Opponents of the parent trigger – which would allow such conversions based solely on the consent of the parents – might argue that Lake Wales illustrates that schoolwide consensus can be achieved. But it also true that even a parent and community effort so powerfully positioned as the one led by Gibson was able to convert only five of the community’s seven district schools. These takeovers require the consent of teachers at each school, and the ones at the district middle school have been resistant.
The more important takeaway may be simply that 3,800 students seem to have found a different kind of school they like, and that it happened outside the polarizing pressure of partisan politics. Former Gov. Graham himself told redefinED he has visited the schools and is impressed. “(Robin is) a very strong believer in the public schools,” Graham said, “but he felt Lake Wales needed a public alternative to traditional schools.”
That’s comment enough.
