Vitti
Recent news from Jacksonville, according to the Florida Times-Union: The Duval County School Board is predicting charter schools will continue to grow, drawing more students from district schools and creating a multi-million-dollar shortfall in the district's budget.
There are a couple of things worth noting here.
- Duval's superintendent, Nikolai Vitti, is not known for being reflexively anti-charter.
- The district has proposed closing its budget gap by drawing down reserves or eliminating instructional coaches. The former option isn't sustainable; the latter option would threaten one of the main drivers of Florida's recent gains in elementary school reading achievement.
- Limiting charter school growth — which by definition is happening because parents want more options — is not a solution. But it's an idea traditional school advocates are getting behind.
- Those of us who support tearing down the walls between parents and the schools they want for their children can't simply dismiss these budgeting problems as adult issues.
So what to do?
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