Florida Tax Credit Vouchers are a drain on our educational system and do nothing to solve academic problems. More and more they are beginning to look like pandering to political groups. See the League’s response to calls for ending the lawsuit opposing the vouchers. Protecting public schools and pushing for needed support is the way to solve inequities in education.
Category Archives: Florida
Pinellas to shut down 3 charters
Yes, more fraud, waste and abuse that Florida must address. The Pinellas School Board voted to shut down three NewPoint charter schools today. Windsor Prep, East Windsor and NewPoint Pinellas are all involved in an indictment for fraud. Read the Tampa Bay Times editorial. The editor calls for an investigation of two other NewPoint related schools which also appear to be involved in self dealing with tax payer money.
The same charter management company is indicted in Pensacola for grand theft, money laundering and white collar crimes.
A Charter School Sues Itself?
Have you ever known something did not smell right, but you could not find the source? A court in Missouri found it.
In Renaissance Academy for Math and Science vs. Imagine Schools, the court ruled there was hidden self dealing. The judge fined Imagine Schools one million dollars. This was just one school in trouble in St. Louis, Missouri at the time. Thirty-five hundred children had to be relocated when all Imagine charters were forced to close in St. Louis.
We all need to know how this can happen. It is not unusual.
An Opportunity for Action on Charter School Mismanagement
Progress Florida has a call for action. They urge everyone to sign a letter to the legislature. These are reforms for which we have advocated. They include:
Voucher Lawsuit Appeal: When is a tax a tax?
Oral arguments were heard in the Joanne McCall vs. Governor Scott lawsuit yesterday. The Florida Education Association, Florida League of Women Voters and the NAACP support the suit. It is not clear that the judges in the First District Court of Appeals agree. They must now decide whether the trial will go forward. A video of the hearing will be available on the Florida 1st District Court of Appeal soon.
The issue is whether tax credit vouchers to send students to private, mostly religious schools is constitutional.
VPK Budget Keeps Going Down
Florida is forever robbing Peter to Pay Paul. This year K12 received a modest budget increase. Where did the money come from?
Criminal Summons to Pinellas Charter Management Companies
Newpoint Education Partners and its related companies in Florida are indicted on charges of grand theft, money laundering, and aggravated white collar crime. According to the Tampa Bay Times, the company sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of classroom supplies and technology from closed charters in Escambia to its charter schools in Pinellas. By law, these materials belong to the public school district when charters fail.
Newpoint managed Newpoint Tampa High School until it closed in 2013. Currently, it manages five charter schools in Pinellas and three are in serious financial trouble: Windsor Prep in St. Petersburg and two charters in Clearwater are in serious financial trouble. All Newpoint charters are managed by thee same board members, and they were silent until the problems became public. They are reorganizing, but the management company has gone silent.
Why the Florida legislature allows these charter mismanagement problems to continue is anyone’s guess. Once in awhile, someone tries to get corrective legislation passed, but it must not be a high priority. We have to keep trying.
Enrollment Chaos Already in Hernando
Open enrollment in Florida is here. Your child can attend any public school anywhere, if there is space. Hernando opened up all 5, 8, 11 and 12th grades so children could switch to a school outside their zoned school. Once those grades were filled, they would open up 10th grades as well as others where demand exists.
It was a big shuffle even though parents had to arrange transportation for their children. Not everyone was satisfied. Five schools were overcrowded and could not accept over 500 students who applied.
Open enrollment may not impact some counties too much. They already have allowed students to transfer. Movement across county lines could increase especially where parents work in one county and live in another. Unfortunately, when students leave a school, they take their state funding with them. As a result, schools with declining enrollments have even more problems providing a quality education.
There are cities that try to organize choice in order to balance the school population. In Minneapolis, for example, all students are enrolled in an area lottery. A child may apply to one of three schools that are relatively nearby. The assignment of students and teachers as well as special programs is planned to allow high quality programs at each school. It is a way to balance socio-economic characteristics to ensure there are advanced classes as well as extra support in every school.
Rural schools do not have much choice. Leon county schools does enroll children from neighboring counties, but those rural schools that remain have problems not only with funding, but also with teacher recruitment. The long term answer may be technology, but that too is in scarce supply.
Kindergarten Readiness: To Test or Not to Test
Remember when Susan Bowles, the kindergarten teacher in Gainesville said “NO” to the kindergarten readiness test? The kids could not reliably use the computer mouse. One thing for sure was that the children just beginning kindergarten were not computer ready!
The State put the test on hold last year. This year they tried an alternative test.
Teachers vote with their feet
Does eliminating tenure makes any difference in the quality of the teacher workforce (as judged by achievement test score gains)? The Brookings Institute published an article that sheds some light on the impact prior to 2011. By comparing the departure rate of teachers with lower gain scores to those with higher gain scores, one would expect more lower rated teachers to leave.