Last summer, the Florida Board of Education sought changes at three persistently struggling rural North Florida schools.

It seemed likely at least one, Hamilton County's only high school, would have to become a charter school. Weeks later, the Hamilton school board voted to join other districts challenging a charter-friendly school turnaround law.

Now, though, it looks like a charter conversion may not be in the works. At least not yet.

Hamilton's revised turnaround plan is on the agenda for the state board's meeting next week in Jacksonville. The plan calls for bringing in an external operator to help run the school. (more…)

When Kevin Jackson learned about a grassroots effort to convert his daughter’s middle school to a charter, he became newly hopeful about improving student achievement. In recent years, the Manatee County school has mostly been stuck at a "C" letter grade or below.

“I am so excited for my community and for the parents,” he said. Lincoln Middle School “has developed a negative stigma as far as the area. Now we get an opportunity to compete with the best.”

Jackson said the charter school would have more flexibility to create programs tailored to students’ needs. About 44 percent of the school’s population is Latino, he said, and every student is on free and reduced lunch.

“A charter would allow us to venture outside the box to give our Hispanic population different resources,” he said.

If the change takes place, Lincoln will join 22 other schools that also converted to charters with a majority vote from parents and teachers.

Florida law allows parents and teachers to convert any traditional public school to a charter by petition. But that rarely happens. In some places, administrators and teachers have faced retaliation for aiding conversion efforts, even though the law protects them.

In Manatee County, however, at some key officials support the change. Their district is home to one past charter conversion, and it looks like a success. Rowlett Academy for Arts and Communication did well as an elementary school, and it's set to add middle grades this fall.

At Lincoln, the principal, a teacher and parents argue such a change will enable the school to better serve its population while providing more autonomy and accountability.

A call to change

Concerns about Lincoln’s performance prompted teachers and parents to come together to lobby for change. Nearly 70 percent of students perform below grade level. (more…)

GAINESVILLE - Last week, the Florida Board of Education approved a plan that would consolidate the two public schools in Jefferson County, Fla. and convert them to a charter school.

As the board voted, Bill Brumfield, the newly elected school board chairman, breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank God," he said.

Thursday's vote ended months-long saga to win approval for a plan to turn around the struggling North Florida district.

And it sent one of the state's most impoverished and persistently struggling rural school systems down an uncharted course.

State board members remarked that Jefferson is preparing to launch a miniature version of the great experiment in New Orleans, in which the school district handed the operation of nearly all its public schools over to charter school providers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans "is a model, potentially, that can offer some hope" about what can happen when charter schools work with a district to raise student achievement, board member Rebecca Fishman Lipsey said, "especially where there's high levels of poverty."

Right now, four charter school operators may be candidates for the job. They include a network associated with one of Florida's largest management companies, the organization that revitalized public schools in a small Central Florida town, and a mom-and-pop Palm Beach County charter school founded by a Jefferson County native.

Over the next two weeks, the district will court these organizations, and try to find one that's up to the task.

"We're turning over to a charter school to save the district, for the children's sake," Brumfield told the state board, which rejected three earlier, state-mandated turnaround plans, deciding the district couldn't get the job done on its own.

Brumfield said parents, many of whom he'd taught over four decades as an educator, were ready for a big change.

"They all want this. They want something new," he said. "They see Governor's Charter [Academy] over in Tallahassee, and they want something like that, but in their community."

Decades of struggle

Jefferson County's school system is an outlier in many ways. (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.

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…)

Almost two years ago, a group of Miami-Dade public school administrators won a first-of-its-kind verdict, when a Florida administrative law judge found their school district illegally thwarted their bid to convert the Neva King Special Education Center into a charter school.

That case isn't over. It's now moved to federal court, where the administrators have filed a free speech complaint against the school board.

They claim the Miami-Dade district has a systemic "bias" against efforts by parents and teachers to convert traditional public schools to charters, and that the school board owes them back pay and other damages.

After the 2014 administrative law ruling, the administrators didn't get their jobs back, but they were able to receive comparable positions in Miami-Dade Public Schools. The Miami New Times reports: (more…)

From the News Service of Florida

An administrative law judge said Tuesday the Miami-Dade County School Board should pay $233,000 in attorneys' fees in a case filed by employees who said they faced retaliation for trying to open a charter school.

The legal-fees recommendation by Judge Edward T. Bauer, which now goes to the state Department of Education, stems from an underlying case in which school employees Alberto T. Fernandez, Henny Cristobal and Patricia E. Ramirez alleged they suffered retaliation after seeking to convert Neva King Cooper Educational Center to a charter school.

Bauer's recommended order said the Miami-Dade County school system "quickly squelched the conversion efforts and, beginning in late April of 2012, reassigned all three petitioners to undesirable work locations." (more…)

In the first case of its kind, the state has sided with two South Florida school administrators who faced retaliation for trying to convert their public school to a charter.

This month's ruling by the state Department of Education upholds the findings of an administrative law judge, who found Miami-Dade schools unlawfully retaliated against a principal and assistant principal by assigning them to other jobs, where they had to perform menial tasks.

Florida law protects school employees from reprisal by school districts if they support charter conversions, and this is the case in which administrators relied on those protections.

Administrators will be compensated for attorneys fees bonuses they would have received if they had remained in their leadership posts at Neva King Cooper Educational Center.

But their charter conversion efforts remain thwarted, and the school district will not have to return them to their old positions. The department's final order in the case notes that the school district has placed them in equivalent positions.

A Miami-Dade school district spokeswoman told the Miami Herald, which first reported the ruling, that the district was now "satisfied" with the outcome.

The original ruling in the case can be found here. We explored the significance of this case in an interview with Robin Gibson, the attorney who represented the administrators.

Charter schools. An arts magnet in Manatee considers converting to a charter school because of the district's ongoing financial woes. Bradenton Herald.

Common Core. Hillsborough school board members voice all kinds of concerns about Common Core. Tampa Bay Times.

Tony Bennett. StateImpact Florida gives ink to anonymous, garden variety critics.

Teacher pay. Rick Scott's teacher pay raise tour continues, reports the Orlando Sentinel. Volusia teachers will probably get less than the $2,500 Scott pitched, reports the Daytona Beach News Journal.

Teacher Appreciation Week. South Florida Sun Sentinel takes note.

School spending. Budget cuts in Pasco look bigger than anticipated, reports Gradebook. The school board responds by cutting all literacy coaches and media specialists, reports the Tampa Bay Times. The Flagler school board debates potential  cuts, reports the Daytona Beach News Journal. (more…)