Grumpy Old Teacher

Duval County Public Schools has named its two finalists for the Superintendent’s position: Christopher Bernier (Lee County, FL former superintendent who resigned unexpectedly in April–one board member had this to say: Debbie Jordan expressed disappointment that the separation agreement had to be negotiated in two days and without public discussion. “I know we cannot explain what has transpired,” Jordan said. “It’s just hard for me to understand why there is not any kind of conversation on this.”)

Indeed, a mystery surrounds his departure as reported here. But hey, he wants to come to Duval County and let’s make him a finalist without bothering to do the most basic Google search on his name.

At this point, with the way this process has been going, I want to throw shade on the Florida School Boards Association, who is driving the process. If you’ve been watching the meetings, the Duval School Board has pretty much done whatever they said.

The other finalist is Daniel Smith (Loudon County, VA current chief of schools.) He was acting superintendent for a period of time after the Loudon County School Board fired its superintendent for retaliating against an employee. That’s no reflection upon Dr. Smith, of course, but it contributes to the miasma that has hung over the DCPS superintendent search from the beginning.

How did it come to this?

At today’s school board meeting, the members and the FSBA representatives talked about how they have two outstanding finalists to consider. I’m not sure how many would agree. Local journalist Nate Monroe had this to say in a recent Florida Times-Union column:

To be superintendent of a Florida school district today is to manage decline and to do so while standing mute — because outspokenness is off limits in the Free State of Florida. Vindictive state officials, vindictive school board members, vindictive right-wing activists who want to ban books and micromanage the curriculum: they are ghouls, all, that a superintendent must wrestle with.

Florida Politics reporter A.G. Gancarski offered this in a recent opinion piece for Jax Today, a local online publication from WJCT, the local NPR station:

And what’s clear based on the superintendent search thus far is that any candidate who comes in will do so with slight experience, possibly none, in a major district like Duval, with competing forces that include a very activist state commissioner of education.

As both journalists note, a dystopian future of decline hangs over the school district. It cannot get on top of teacher misconduct scandals, its grand rebuilding plan is collapsing, and declining enrollment is going to force the closure of many schools, a fraught process that upsets the community and drives a heated and divisive political process of us vs. them.

If you watched today’s school board meeting that determined the two finalists, you might have observed the lack of enthusiasm about the process. There was a lack of energy on the dais. But at the end, they congratulated themselves on finding these candidates much as King Charles has recently been handing out military honors to his family members who have not earned them.

Is the Duval County School Board as clueless as Britain’s Royal Family, who seem determined not to notice the visible decline?

How has it come to this?

We need answers, not the argle-bargle of spitballing a word salad full of jargon. The FSBA is going to work on questions for each board member to ask next week when the two candidates arrive for interviews. Each member will take an area of focus:

• Charlotte Joyce: Fiscal responsibility and transparency. The other members chuckled with one commenting that they knew this would be her area of focus.
• April Carney: Culture and climate. Oh dear God, why? Sorry, I didn’t mean to inject my bias into this piece.
• Kelly Coker: Highly Effective Educators and Staff. They had to ask her to repeat it, she was one of the worst in not talking into the mike. I’m beginning to wonder if her failure to file for re-election means her heart is no longer in the work and she’s not going to.
• Warren Jones: Duuuuvalll! In other words, he’s going to be the point man in forcing the candidates to address the situation in Duval as opposed to offering palaver about argle-bargle.
• Cindy Pearson: High Quality Partnerships. Yeah, I don’t get it, either.
• Lori Hershey: I really wanted Duuvall! But since it’s taken, Personal Leadership.
• Daryl Willey: Thats leaves me Instructional Leadership and Student Supports.

You can watch the entire meeting here. It ran a little more than an hour. Pro tip: turn on the Closed Captioning. I’ve been kvetching all afternoon about the sound quality but the district has yet to respond.

Dates to keep in mind:

• Monday, May 13, 6 PM – 8 PM. Community Meet and Greet. You get the chance to shake a hand and maybe get an answer to a quick question if the crowds are low. Otherwise, the FSBA is gonna keep the line moving, perhaps toward the “Egress” if you’re up-to-date on your P.T. Barnum.
• Monday, May 13, afternoon. Interviews will take place. I believe this will be at the Schultz Center but I may be mistaken. Full board interviews will take place at 1 PM and as these will constitute a public meeting, anyone interested should be able to attend.
• Monday, May 13, mid-morning. A community focus group will interview the candidates. As best as I can schuss this out, they don’t fall under the Sunshine Law and the public will not be allowed to attend. I will correct this if in error. The focus group meeting has been publicly noticed so it’s likely that members of the public will be able to attend.
• Monday, May 13, morning. The candidates will tour a few schools in Riverside. Yes, I know, I live in Baldwin.
• Thursday, May 23. The school board meets to pick someone. Or maybe not, who knows how things will turn out?

The fillies run today in the Kentucky Oaks, which can be more fun than Saturday when the boys do the Derby. But here in Jacksonville, outside the one scratch (Luis Solano, reasons unknown,) the remaining five semi-finalists have submitted their qualifying materials in hopes of being asked to the race next week.

You will find the materials posted here on the district’s website. There’s a link for community feedback and I encourage you to use it after reading and viewing the responses. It will take an hour and a half of your time; if you care about the district and the leader it will hire, it is worth it.

Do both. In my review last night, I found that some candidates did not come across well in their written answers, but communicated well in their videos and vice versa. Also, not all candidates were well-versed in the local issues, but there were a few who were and had ideas. I have to admit they would have an edge with me if I was a sitting board member.

I won’t offer individual critiques of the submissions, but rather offer a handicapping guide:

• The candidates who spoke to the issues of teacher misconduct, enrollment decline, and the proposed plan to consolidate schools get a plus. Give an extra plus to the ones who cited the actual statistics. They are paying attention.
• The candidates who offered general palaver in response to the questions that were full of buzzwords, jargon, and more get a minus. Back in the day, we called it slinging the <ahem>.
• Those who wanted to restart the master facilities planning get a minus. We’ve been planning for the last three decades. That’s a Jacksonville hallmark of local governance. We ought to trademark it and make a little cash off licensing fees. We don’t need to reassess and start from scratch. We know the situation. How the <ahem> do we get out of it? At this point, I don’t think the voters will extend the half-penny sales tax when it expires.
• Those whose answers on budgeting followed the Florida timeline get a nod. The candidate who didn’t and said a final budget for board adoption would be done by mid-March gets mocking laughter. The Florida legislature has not passed a new budget by that date unless we’re in an election year.
• Be alert for those who recognize the dynamics of the demographics. The school-age population of the city does not match the profile of the overall population. One spoke to this with suppressed passion in his voice. A longshot, but in the Derby anything can happen. This is especially true when you watch the videos. After the first two, I thought I might title this article “Bald White Guys with Beards + One Woman,” but the next person stopped that thought.
• Those who didn’t squeeze out an ‘all stakeholders,’ but instead recognized the crucial role of involving students in policy decisions get a plus. Two plusses if they were talking about discipline issues.
• Three candidates have a connection to Northern Virginia school districts. In other words, blue country. There’s no way to figure out how this affects our handicapping, but will it factor into the future once Ronny D. has finished making up with Trump and looks in his rearview mirror only to see Glenn Youngkin closing the gap? A superintendent, ostensibly hired by a nonpartisan school board, is nevertheless enmeshed in Florida politics by the very nature of the state educational enviroment.

Everyone will have their own opinion, but for my money (including the half-penny sales tax and extra property tax mil,) I would invite these three for interviews next week: Daniel Smith, Adam Taylor, and Josiah Phillips.

In the meantime, mix yourself a mint julep (bourbon, sugar, and a sprig of mint) and enjoy the race.

While we wait for the school district (Duval County Public Schools, Jacksonville, FL) to post submitted responses from the six superintendent semi-finalists, let’s take a look at the school board races. These races will appear on the August primary ballot and, if no one wins 50% + 1 of the vote, the top two finishers move to a run-off contest for the November ballot.

From the Supervisor of Elections office as of today, May 2, 2024:

The only active race I’m aware of is District 7, with Travis Akers actively campaigning and the others occasionally responding on social media. The current board member, Lori Hershey, is term-limited and unable to run for re-election.

The same is true of District 5. Warren Jones is term-limited. The two active candidates have names that are well known in the city. Reginald Blount has tried several times to become a city councilman. Hank Rogers ran in 2016, but Jones edged him out.

Here’s an interesting tidbit. The link to Rogers starts out describing the 2016 race for District 7 and whose name appears? Melody Bolduc, that’s who, now trying again in 2024.

Cindy Pearson, District 3, is the incumbent running for a second term. Rebecca Nathanson is a newcomer. I’ll do a deeper dive in the summer, but what catches my eye is not that she identifies with the group Moms for Liberty but that she designates herself a School Board Watchdog (capitals are hers.) There’s no such thing.

The other candidate, Justin Almond Williams, has an interesting history and we’ll let it go at that (for now.)

In District 1, the incumbent is Kelly Coker, a former high-ranking employee of the school system and now a board member. She has not yet filed to appear in the ballot although the Supervisor of Elections office advises me the deadline is Friday, June 14 at 12:00 Noon.

Of the other two candidates, Nadine Ebri and Tony Ricardo, the former is a teacher and previous finalist for TOY (Teacher of the Year) and the latter a commercial artist and business owner who cites previous experience as a public school teacher then a private school teacher.

I’ll take a closer look at their candidacies as the summer comes in and (maybe) we have a new superintendent. For now, these are the names to keep an eye on.

Notably absent from the Super 20 applications submitted to the Duval County Public Schools was Scott Schneider, the current Chief of Schools for the district. He had been interviewing for superintendent positions elsewhere and had submitted an application last October but then the School Board halted its process.

Why? Why was he no longer interested in being Superintendent is the question I asked myself when looking at the applications candidates had submitted this Spring.

We now have three very good reasons, three challenges that will constrict what a new superintendent will be able to do and that point to a larger challenge overall for public school districts in Florida in which further employment with public schools seems more like being an enemy agent in a hostile land than a noble endeavor to educate future generations of citizens.

During this month of April, we have learned:

• Cost overruns on construction has left the district $1.9 billion short of what they need to complete the original plan to rebuild aging and obsolete school buildings that voters funded by adopting a half-penny sales tax in 2020. Among the questions people are asking is what happened to the Citizens Oversight Board that was going to oversee the endeavor and review the spending? Why haven’t they raised the alarm before now? Is it only in 2024, given the history of inflation since we emerged from the pandemic, that people are realizing that construction costs have increased drastically?
• The scandal at the dedicated magnet high school for the arts, Douglas Anderson, is not over. A math teacher was arrested at Walt Disney World for indecent exposure, although the arrest report reveals he was standing in a window doing something with himself–it was no inadvertent forgetting to close the curtains while getting dressed, the district chose to wait two months after learning about the arrest before removing him from the classroom, only when the news broke to the public did they act. As if to underscore the lapse, the ex-teacher whose transgressions were first reported last year pled guilty to charges of lewd and lascivious conduct with a student.
• The school district is seriously short of funds and is contemplating drastic action. The story began breaking on social media after Chris Guerrieri, writer of the blog Education Matters, reported that he was receiving reports of massive personnel cuts about to happen. His report was amplified by Angie Nixon, who represents District 13 in the Florida House of Representatives. Finally, in a classic late Friday afternoon news dump move, the Acting Superintendent, Dana Kriznar, sent an email to all employees that was later shared on the district’s website. A confluence of factors involving Florida’s hellbent drive toward privatization through universal vouchers, the end of ESSER (Covid relief) funding from the federal government, and declining enrollment that is projected at 10% or so that will reduce state funding for the district has resulted in a projected elimination of 700 jobs for the new school year.

In the midst of this turmoil, the School Board is conducting a Superintendent search. The need is dire; someone needs to be hired and in place by July 1. At this point in the process, we are waiting for the six semi-finalists to submit their answers, written and video, to seven ‘deal-breaking’ questions that the Board generated (one from each member. It would take too long of a tangent to explain why Florida’s Sunshine laws did not allow them to consult about the question each would pose.)

If you want to see the questions that were emailed to the six semi-finalists, go here. Only one of them addresses one of three issues above, which brings up the question: What do School Board members know and when did district staff inform them?

One of the memorable quotes I remember a professor saying during my college days, even though it’s decades later, is wondering who’s abandoning the ship: the crew or the rats? The Acting Superintendent was supposed to leave December 31, but was talked into remaining through the remainder of the school year because the board wanted to restart their search in 2024. I wonder if she’s now regretting that decision.

Nevertheless, the overall feeling is that of a rudderless ship. No one to steer, no wind in the sails, marooned in the Sargasso Sea and for the literate among us, a thirst to reread The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

The district will follow its Spring budgeting practice: principals will meet with staff, the district will identify affected personnel, and people will roll into the summer break wondering where they will end up, if they wash up on any shore (school) at all.

No one seems to have any idea of how they will meet and beat the challenge. It’s man-the-lifeboats time. I wonder what the superintendent candidates will submit. Will they simply withdraw, put forth a bold plan and assert they can right the ship, or ignore the existential challenges? Or are they not monitoring district news at all? Talk about a deal-breaker.

What will the School Board do? Someone needs to take command. Or will we be left singing, along with the immortal Satchmo, this song:

What follows are thumbnail sketches of the 20 applicants who want to be the next Superintendent of Duval County Public Schools. Before beginning, I want to thank the comms specialist who promptly responded to my request and sent me the 20 applications via email.

The applications consisted of a cover letter, a CV or resume, often pages long, reference letters (‘To Whom It May Concern’,) and transcripts. A few had a glossy brochure touting the candidate as well. I skimmed rapidly the cover (brag) letters, focused on the resumes, and ignored the references and transcripts. No one includes a bad reference letter in their app. We can do a deeper dive once the School Board winnows the list to semi-finalists.

I’m going to work in reverse alphabetical order. I did this occasionally as a teacher because, if your father’s name was Zyxby, why should you always be the last? It’s good to mix up the order.

Wilson, Roy (Dr.). His cover letter says he’s enthusiastic. I only mention this because many used the same word to describe themselves. His resume did not follow the usual convention of listing experience in descending chronological order. First, he lists his experience with public schools as a principal. There are gaps. As we scroll down to see what those are, he lists being CEO of a charter school and assistant superintendent for Newark (NJ) schools. Seems like he has a career of promotions and then demotions. Given that the Board wants candidates with experience of being superintendent of medium to large-sized school districts, I’m not sure he’ll make the cut.

Taylor, Adam. One of the few whose cover letters don’t focus on what makes them great, but talks about the needs of public schools and then why he makes a good fit. He spends more than a page listing accomplishments under the heading ‘experience’ on his resume. He’s currently a consultant (since 2020) to help school use data to make students college and career ready, yada, yada, yada. Before that, he was superintendent for a system with ‘2500 scholars.‘ Emphasis mine; that’s charter school talk.

Stenwall, Andrew. A Pointe Vedra resident, he begins his cover letter by confessing that he’s never been a teacher or a school administrator. But! he’s qualified. Because reasons like he’s worked for asset management and capital management firms. Wow, do we really want the equivalent of a hedge fund manager in charge of our schools? Let’s give him the Chutzpah Award and move on.

Stalliard, George (Dr.) The last page of his app is the most intriguing as it documents a court’s approval of his name change from Stollard to Stalliard. There’s no explanation and he owes us none except that he thought it was important to include in his app. Another person with enthusiasm, he writes that he is an emiritus VP with a college, which matches his resume that he held the position until 2023. No idea what he’s been up to since then. There are other gaps in his work experience. Perhaps the military? There’s something in the packet that says he served. Resume writing tip: don’t leave gaps. It only raises questions about what the candidate doesn’t want us to know.

Solano, Luis (Anticipated completion of doctorate this June). Plucked from Collier County in 2017, he has been working for the Detroit Community Public School District ever since. Yes, he’s the VITTI candidate. Previous to joining Collier in 2012, he worked for Miami-Dade citing his work with a large turn-around high school. That’s not a disqualifier, but it will be interesting to see how seriously the Board takes his candidacy. Is he a Nikolai clone? We know how turbulent the Vitti era was. Do we take a chance on bringing that back?

Smith, Daniel (Dr.) He has sincere interest in the position–as opposed to an insincere interest? Let’s have a writing class on how the use of adjectives often weakens the prose. Also, he makes the classic mistake of putting his education first on his resume. Five years or so after college, it’s not as important as experience and accomplishments, but let’s plow on. He’s never been a superintendent (although he was acting superintendent last year while his board searched), but he has experience with large public school districts in Virginia. He’s worth a second look.

Robinson, Donise (Dr.) She submitted professionally produced materials and it makes a favorable impression. She is in charge of curriculum for a district of 11,500 students. She has 20 years of experience working as a teacher, which I like very much as opposed to those who ran through the classroom to climb the ladder. However, she is not likely to make the cut due to a lack of leadership at higher levels.

Robinson, Corwin (Dr.) His cover letter is addressed generically and rather oddly: ‘Dear Human Resources Director.’ He continues by citing his expertise as a ‘C-suite professional’ and award-winning army colonel. He gives a list of his education positions and the last mention is being superintendent. Where? St. Tammany Parrish (LA) and Lake County and Clarksville (Montgomery County, TN.) Hmm, let’s see what Mercedes Schneider and TC Weber have to say about him. He says he was in charge of discipline for the Metropolitan Nashville (TN) school system. Name recognition echoes in my mind.

Proctor, Cheryl (Dr.) She worked her way up through the Broward School system until 2015 when she bolted for Philadelphia. Although never having been a superintendent, she has held key positions as a Chief Academic Officer and (currently) Deputy Superintendent for a 49,000+ student school system.

Phillips, Josiah (Dr.) He addresses his cover letter as thus, “Dear Board Members, Students, Teachers, Support Staff, Leaders, Parents/Guardians, and Community Members of Duval County Public Schools”. Another retired Army officer, his experience in education is being Chief Information Officer for several school systems, the latest being Broward County. So strong in comms, but how about the rest? He’s an adjunct professor for Liberty University and has a connection to the Council of Great City Schools. Those are red flags for some of us.

Perez, Carlos (Dr.) Currently working for the Education Reform Project located in Miami Beach, he last worked as Chief Human Resources Officer for Martin County (2019-2022.) Most of his education background is in human resources.

Nixon, Michelle (Dr.) ‘Jaksonville’ is her home and Duval County is her heart. I’m not one for nitpicking spelling and grammar errors as even the best of us struggle with it when we work on screens, but as it appears in her opening pitch …. 12 years of experience, she’s done it all–in charter schools. She currently works as an ELA teacher in a local charter school.

Narcisse, Sito (Dr.) The one that got away in 2018 when the district hired Diana Greene. His resume has only grown stronger although, as the county of my boyhood, I have to take exception to Prince George’s County, Md. in his resume. There is no apostrophe, dude! It’s Prince Georges. But yeah, if I was an oddsmaker, I would make him the favorite.

Mitchell, Sylvia (Dr.) With ‘enthusiastic interest,’ she addresses her cover letter to the Hiring Committee. It doesn’t seem she’s so enthusiastic to do the basic research as to find out who’s on the School Board. Another candidate whose experience lies in charter schools: Promise Community and IDEA (Tampa Bay!) She now works for something called Region 4 Education Service Center. What is that, you say? I googled it: Region 4 Education Service Center (Region 4) is one of 20 regional education service centers established by the Texas Legislature in 1967 to assist school districts and charter schools in improving efficiencies and student performance.

Macaluso, Christopher (Dr.) He works in New York. Another candidate with professionally produced materials, he emphasizes his ability to manage budgets. He’s currently an Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, and Personnel.

Greenley, Jeffrey (Esq.) Placing esquire in one’s signature designates that one is an attorney. He has worked in Ohio’s Attorney General Office on education issues. He plans on completing his educational doctorate in the fall. Oh, and he was a cast member at Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean. During those years he also worked as a teacher in Provo, Utah. That doesn’t make him a good candidate for Superintendent, but it does make him a good poster boy for the scandal of teachers needing a second job to make ends meet.

Dotson, Ronnie (Dr.) I’ve never seen it before, but there they are–blurbs in the left column of his resume. He lives in Hilton Head, SC, but works as an adjunct professor in Kentucky. There are many overlaps in his resume between his one superintendency and his professorial career. If the School Board gives this a second look, the first question they need to ask is if he will move to Jacksonville and give up all the side hustles.

Boyd, Shahnazz She’s passionate, she’s interested, but she has no experience in education. She makes a good community partner, but damn, how long has she lived in Jacksonville and not understood the snake pit for what it is.

Bernier, Christopher (Dr.) Superintendent of Lee County, Chief of Staff for Clark County, NV (Las Vegas) and I’m not going to make any gambling jokes, and Associate Superintendent for Orange County (FL), he will get a second look. The cover letter is a little cocky: “My resume will verify that I meet the necessary experience, education, and professional requirements for the position of superintendent.”

Barrow, Melissa “Is it good for kids?” is the question she always asks according to her cover letter. Assistant Superintendent for the East Ramapo School District (NY) for 10 years, she moved on to be Superintendent for the Catskill Central School District for 3 months in 2023. No mention of what she’s been doing since. But what she wants you to know is that her big accomplishment was developing the school calendar for the next year.

And there you have it. Cuts to be made at the next school board meeting, Tuesday, April 23.

David Lee Finkle, an amazing artist who creates and publishes the comic strip Mr. Fitz, ran this strip yesterday. I hope he doesn’t mind me borrowing the image. You can find it and the rest of his work on his website here.

As a retired math teacher, this one has had me thinking across yesterday and today. Most students, almost all of them, have been conditioned to think of mathematics as finding the right answer to put down on the paper. Standardized testing has only reinforced this approach to the discipline. It doesn’t matter how one gets to the answer as long as one bubbles in the correct letter on the test: A, B, C, or D.

Challenged by those items where the student has to enter some other response, most choose the simple strategy of ignoring the item and moving to the next question.

And why not? The typical state test is so bad that 30% is usually a passing score, give or take a few percentage points.

Cheat sites have only made the problem worse. Demand that students show their work and they will access a website that will give them all the steps to copy onto their paper. Online practice programs make it even more worse. There’s no need to copy the steps unless the teacher is a masochist and the program requires the student to enter them, which means hours of grading work for the teacher with little instructional value for the students who rarely review the feedback.

I tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to change the student mindset and the classroom environment. They were not students learning math, a subject most find uninteresting, but young mathematicians learning their craft who had to find solutions to problems and defend them. Prove to their classmates and others around the world that they had the right answer. That meant more than an oral explanation in the classroom; it meant producing a written product that could be posted online for students in other parts of the world and cultures to review and understand.

It’s a hard thing to pull off. But it’s a skill all students need as they move along their life journey and enter the adult world, even those who will enter the trades. Every plumber needs to explain the problem to the homeowner and what he needs to do to repair it. Every mechanic needs to explain to the car owner what’s making that funny noise and what they need to do. They have to be able to answer questions and defend their solutions.

Math! Not as worthless as many people think.

PS: I haven’t been posting much as I travel through my first year of retirement. Education issues are well covered by others more knowledgeable than me and I don’t need to kick my two cents into the conversation. I’ve come to believe that most educational blogging is trapped in an echo chamber and it’s hard to reach the outside audience as well as the fact that even if my side wins the arguments, it’s a Pyrrhic victory. If we want to save public education, we have to roll our sleeves up and enter the messy business of politics. No promises, I am working on reimagining what I want to do with this forum. More to come.

Florida! Or Floriduh, depending upon your opinion of its educational practices that, like the Dark Arts of the Harry Potter series, are “… Many, Varied, Ever-Changing, And Eternal. Fighting Them Is Like Fighting A Many-Headed Monster, Which, Each Time A Neck Is Severed, Sprouts A Head Even Fiercer And Cleverer Than Before. You Are Fighting That Which Is Unfixed, Mutating, Indestructible.” (J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Book 6.)

Yet, hope arose after the 2023 legislative session, in which the latest education bill included a provision that the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) submit recommendations to the legislature to reduce burdensome requirements and make it possible for public schools to compete with charters on a more even basis.

While many believed that it would be an exercise in eliminating unnecessary paperwork and reports, it seems that some have more substantive changes in mind. In particular, these three areas have been mentioned:

• Contracts: Allow teachers to receive three-year contracts instead of annual contracts once they have completed four years of effective or highly effective beginning of career teaching. Moreover, districts would be permitted to use years of service and degrees earned as part of their criteria for determining salary schedules.
• Testing: Eliminate third grade retention based upon reading scores from the state test. Take a moment, reread that sentence, and let the significance sink in. Also, eliminate graduation requirements for high school students that mandate passing scores on the Algebra 1 exam and the 10th grade reading test.
• Class size: The legislature long ago neutered the voter-passed class size amendment including fines assessed upon district’s who failed to meet it. Yet, districts have been required to submit plans on how they will reduce class sizes to the specified limits even though they have no incentive for even attempting to implement the plans. Under one proposal, plans are no longer needed. Also, districts would gain more discretion in how to use their capital funds and would no longer have to offer surplus property to charter schools. (Source: Tampa Bay Times Gradebook.)

While these are only proposals and they face considerable opposition, given Florida’s hell-bent-on-privatization governor who has achieved one-man rule in the way he has imposed his will upon a cowed legislature and perhaps judiciary and the long arm of Jeb Bush and his foundations that exercise an outsized grip on policy in the state, it is remarkable that they have been mentioned at all.

For that matter, it is remarkable that the legislature even asked for ideas to reduce the burdens upon public schools and that included a recognition that they have to compete in a marketplace in which they are disadvantaged. Then again, this may turn out to be a Trojan horse like Tennessee, which is flirting with refusing all federal funds, Title One and the like, in order to not bother with essential educational rights of students and parents that states must accept in order to receive funding.

It’s doubtful anything substantial will happen, Still, we can dream, can’t we? Maybe Florida, which initiated many of the terrible, harmful practices in our schools, is ready to reform the reforms.

The story that took place in Washington’s Mukilteo School District first came to my attention a couple weekends ago when I noticed posts on social media claiming that book bans are not the sole province of the right using this as its prime example. Naturally, as one who is opposed to book banning, I was intrigued and chased the story down.

Executive summary: this is not a case of book banning, whereby ideologically-motivated activists demand that schools remove books they don’t like from public schools. Rather, it is a case study about how a school district goes about choosing curriculum for students.

In the Mukilteo School District, the Harper Lee classic was a mandatory part of the curriculum, a novel that all 9th grade students must read as a part of their English Language Arts classes. The book (TKAM) was long a part of freshman studies in the district. Yet, students of color began sharing with some of their teachers that they didn’t like the book.

Here we must draw the first distinction between the usual book drama that takes place at your local monthly school board meeting. Student voice is important, but has to be heard with discretion. Did the students object because of an emotional response or did they have reasons? They didn’t say they found the book painful to read because of its topic or the feelings they felt. Their objection was that the book did not represent their voices, that it presented a white-centered viewpoint of how Black people were treated in the 1930s. It didn’t speak for them. They asked that it be replaced with a book that featured a Black-centered point of view, one that didn’t put the Black characters to the side but featured them as the central characters whose experiences the author was writing about and whose experiences they were studying.

That’s a reasonable ask.

Before going further into the story, let’s remember that this was not about removing the book from the school, but replacing it in the curriculum. Even with that caveat, I’m afraid many readers are already rising in revolt because they loved the book and, for them, that settles the issue.

I ran into this a few years ago when a Black teacher shared why she believed Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck) was inappropriate as the freshman novel. I agreed with her reasoning and shared her post. Immediately, an ELA teacher in the district roared back about what a great book it was (despite Steinbeck’s casual racism that was prevalent in the 1930s when he wrote it) and she knew Black parents who approved the teaching.

While things have changed in the last few years, it’s still instructive to consider how ELA curriculum used to be organized: one quarter poetry, one quarter fiction, one quarter nonfiction, one quarter drama. Many other districts will be different, but the point is that students can’t read and study everything. Choices have to be made. At best, only one novel a year can be read in full if these other areas are to be covered.

So … if students can only read one novel each year, what novel should it be?

At one school (Kamiak High School,) the teachers agreed with the students and asked administration to be excused from teaching this mandatory text. The administration agreed, but advised the teachers that it did not have the authority to do more than grant a request for one year.

The teachers wanted more. They wanted the book removed from the curriculum for the entire district and for teachers to be forbidden to teach the book in their classes. Again, this differs from a book ban in that they did not ask for the book to be removed from libraries and made unavailable to students. They didn’t want it taught in classrooms.

We don’t have an attempt to ban a book in this district. What we do have is an unfolding curriculum battle about what book to mandate that all 9th grade students study.

The Kamiak teachers were told the next step would have to be a book challenge if they wanted a curriculum change. They decided to do it and that’s when all Hades broke loose. The district curriculum committee convened and the fight was brutal.

In the end, the committee crafted a recommendation for the school board: that the book be removed as mandatory, but that any teacher wishing to use it in her classes be given the option to do so.

The Kamiak teachers were disappointed, but realized this was the best they could get. The school board adopted the recommendation and, in the aftermath, only one teacher in the district continued to assign the book to her students.

During the heated curriculum meetings, many spoke for and against the book. Students asked to address the committee, but the district did not allow them to do so. To gain a sense of the debate, here are two quotes:

“We profoundly question why we should read a book by a White author, in which Black characters are secondary, voiceless, meek, and two-dimensional,” Kuzmany of Kamiak said, according to a copy of her prepared remarks.

“I am standing against taking books out of the hands of our students for any reason,” Freemon of Mariner said, according to a copy of her prepared remarks. “There is not one novel that we teach at the high school that is not offensive to someone, in some capacity.”

In the end, more change came to the district. They held training for teachers to help them with the teaching of controversial materials, they affirmed the right of teachers to choose supplemental materials for their classrooms without needing the approval of the district, and they added two students to their curriculum committee so that student voice would be a part of the adoption decisions.

Was Mockingbird killed? Was it a partially successful book banning? No, it was not. What happened was a particularly difficult moment of making curriculum decisions, decisions that every school district has to make.

Overall, the district made good decisions. If you disagree, what would you change in the process?

PS: if you want to read WaPo’s story for yourself, here’s the link. It is behind a paywall.