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Education Issues Blog

To Educate and Inform on Issues Relating to Public Education

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Our blog is a tool box. Make it work for you. Here you will find data, studies, and perspectives that inform the discussion about school choice. Send stories of events in your state. Tell us about studies that clarify issues. Do your own studies. Use the information you find here to advocate for League positions.

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Big Debate on Racial Disparity in Gainesville

 I wrote this post for this blog in June of 2016.  When I took the data to the district staff, they confirmed that the gap was not limited to specific schools or grade levels.  It was a district-wide problem.  We did not have an explanation, but the income-gap may have been an indicator. Gainesville had the fifth highest income gap in the nation.

In 2018, the U.F. Bureau of Economic and Business Research published a study of racial inequity in Alachua County.  They reported that Alachua County African Americans fared worse than in other areas of the state and nation.  Specifically, they have lower economic well being, educational performance and attainment, and more involvement in the justice system.  These factors are correlated.  Children from low-income families struggle.

In 2016, many explained the achievement gap in Alachua County by pointing to the fact that Gainesville is a college town.  Its people value education.  The district has national awards in math, AP, and culinary arts among other areas.  How could there be a problem?  Yet, there are the same achievement gap problems in Alachua County schools as there are across the nation.  Some say that the problems are worse, and implicit racism in schools is the culprit.  There may be other explanations.

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Who IS Carlee Simon: Alachua County Acting Superintendent?

The new majority on the Alachua County School Board acted quickly to change the Superintendent. Dr. Carlee Simon was named Interim Superintendent today. Karen Clarke has been replaced. Clarke has been called an excellent manager but not a visionary. The School Board will launch a search for a new Superintendent. Some speculate that they will search for someone they already know i.e. Carlee Simon.

Simon has been involved with the community activists associated with GNV4All’s education committee. The committee is chaired by Nathan Crabbe, the Opinion Editor of the Gainesville Sun. According to the Gainesville Sun, the signature project for GNV4All is to create a community health and social service center to be located at Metcalfe Elementary School in east Gainesville. The Center will provide prenatal care along with educational and wrap around services for families with children up to age four. The estimated cost is $350,000 a year.

Funding for the Metcalfe pre-school must come from the community and would need an organizational home. GNV4All has just filed as a nonprofit organization which could receive funds. One might suppose that it would submit a proposal to the Alachua County Children’s Trust for funds from the local tax initiative passed in 2018. Tina Certain, a member of the School Board who participates in GNV4All is also a member of the board of the Children’s Trust.

Carlee Simon faces a big challenge. She has background knowledge in educational policy but limited administrative experience. She was a classroom teacher for five years and earned a PhD in Educational Leadership from the University of Florida in 2010. She was Assistant Professor for eight years at the University of Cincinnati. She returned to Gainesville and is currently enrolled in a graduate program in Urban Planning. Simon is more than a student. She teaches a course as an Adjunct at the University of North Florida and manages her own real estate business.

Running the Alachua County Schools is a complex, challenging job. Simon will have a steep learning curve. Her priorities are clear. She has a vision for equity. Her skills at implementing that vision, however, will be tested. The school system budget is over $537,000,000 but shortfalls in funding are expected due to the pandemic. This is a time of conflicting educational and vocational program needs. We have major school construction projects and difficult school rezoning issues. Some schools are under enrolled and others over enrolled.

Simon will be walking a tight rope as she attempts to build a consensus on how to address the problems. If she falls, Alachua County will need yet another superintendent in June. The School Board will lose face, and GNV4All’s equity goals may be thwarted. We have to be hopeful and vigilant.

There is Hope for a more rational charter school policy!

President-elect Biden’s national policy director released a position on charter schools. Biden would ban for-profit schools and level the playing field on transparency and accountability for charters operated by non-profit management firms. There is even more. Read on:

“As President, Biden will ban for-profit charter schools from receiving federal funding because he just fundamentally believes that if they aren’t doing right by their students, no one should be getting rich by taking advantage of our kids. He will also, for nonprofit charters, Biden will make sure that we stop funding for charter schools that don’t provide results. Biden believes we shouldn’t be wasting the scarce resources that our public schools need so badly. And we’ll require every charter school, including online schools, to be authorized and held accountable by democratically-elected bodies like school boards and also hold to the same standards of transparency and accountability as all public schools. That means things like regular public board meetings and meeting all the same civil rights, employment, health, labor, safety and educator requirements that public schools must. That’s the fundamental premise of the vice president’s belief that every child, regardless of zip code or parent’s income, race or disability, should have equal access to a high-quality public neighborhood education in their school.”

[Asked to define what “results” charters would need to demonstrate, Feldman said “that would be an important priority for a Biden/Harris Department of Education at the beginning of an administration to figure out some rules to set standards that would measure that.”]

“Vice President Biden doesn’t think that we need to do away with all charter schools. He absolutely wants to support our traditional public schools. But … he feels that the way in which he has designed his policy will allow for charter schools that are delivering results to continue, while also making sure that our funding is focused on our traditional neighborhood public schools.”

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