Editor’s note: This commentary from state Rep. Chris Latvala, R-Clearwater, appeared today on the Tampa Bay Times.
There can be no argument that the Hillsborough County School Board is struggling to find its footing.
The members seem to be flailing about looking for answers to the very real problems they are facing. Serious financial mismanagement led to a near state takeover earlier this year. Fortunately for the school board, the federal government bailed them out just in time with a huge influx of federal stimulus dollars. While the financial mismanagement is serious, it pales in comparison to tragically low levels of academic achievement across the district.
With 39 chronically low-performing public schools, Hillsborough County School Board owns the distinction of having more persistently failing schools than any other district in the state. And it’s not even close. Their school board has almost twice as many chronically low performing schools as Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach combined.
Most of these schools serve predominately economically disadvantaged, minority students. Two out of every three Black students in Hillsborough County are reading below grade level. The high school graduation rate for Black students is 10 points lower than for white students in Hillsborough. There is a 35-percentage point gap in math performance between Black and white students in the district.
How does the school board deal with this unconscionable inequity?
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