Grumpy Old Teacher

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.

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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.

In his 2018 book, Jared Diamond examines 12 factors that help or impede an individual in overcoming a personal crisis and how those factors might apply to national crises for countries, both in the past and in the future. He comes up with a list of 12 factors that play into the eventual outcome, analyzes past situations, and then applies them to the current conditions of Japan and the United States to make us wonder if the trying times in which we live may spell doom for our nation.

I recommend reading the book. It’s narrative and leaves out ponderous statistics, graphs and charts, and other numerical measures that would bore the pants off all us ordinary people who don’t massage numbers and think it fun.

It’s a book about entering a crisis and how one or a nation does or does not emerge from it. The more I read, the more I draw an analogy to public education. Let’s examine each factor and think about its application.

1. Consensus that there is a crisis. There is no doubt that all parties, from the most staunch defenders of public education to the worst critics who would end what they sneer at as government schools, agree that public ed is in a crisis. However, there is no consensus about what that crisis is. On one side, there are those who believe the problem is the lack of options for parents seeking the best education for their children, whether the cause is location, inability to meet tuition requirements, or special needs, and those who believe the lack of resources for public schools has caused them to fall into a death spiral.
2. Accepting responsibility for the problem versus blaming others, indulging in self-pity, and playing the role of a victim. I find little evidence that anyone on any side of the education wars (there are more than two sides) accepts responsibility and avoids playing the victim. Public schools whine about how the cards are stacked against them (and they are), but few within those schools accept that there are legitimate reasons why people are checking out and thinking about how they need to change. However, those who advocate for the end of public schools rarely, if ever, acknowledge that they fail to offer a better option. Sure, anyone can tell a few stories to back up their position, but after picking the best cherries out of the bin, they ignore what’s left for the hoi polloi.
3. Build a fence around the problems that need to be solved that brings selective change that maintains the current strengths that should be maintained. Yeah, it’s not happening. We all know that. Yet, if we could, what about our systems of education for children in the K-12 ages would all of us preserve as strengths? Let’s start with the obvious. Most of us would agree that we want our schools to continue sports. Next up, I think we would want music programs to continue in all schools. Yes, I know, school systems have cut these programs to meet testing demands, but have you ever heard anyone saying I would rather my kid spend hours working on math in place of learning to play an instrument? I haven’t. There are others that I could mention, but that would bring arguments that would take us back to #1: do we actually have a consensus about what the problems are?
4. Getting help and resources from others. When it comes to public schools, help (mostly) is not coming. Philanthrocapitalists like the Gates Foundation or the Zuckerberg Initiative don’t offer resources and step back to see what others can do with it. They offer help selectively in order to create examples to offer as evidence that their preconceived theories are correct. Spoiler alert: their record is one of failure. However, the picture is not completely dismal. Taxpayers in many jurisdictions across the blue, red, and purple fabric of our nation have been willing to tax themselves to improve their schools. However, this support is often bled like an 18th century applying leeches to a patient to divert this much needed financing to private school options.
5. Using others as models of how to solve problems. If someone says Finland one more time, I’m going to scream at them until I get committed to the Northeast Florida State Hospital. (Spoiler alert: no one should want to be there.) There are plenty of models from other nations we could learn from, but we refuse to do so … ’cause we’re ‘Murica,’ you know? We’re exceptional and have nothing to learn from others.
6. Identity. What do public schools offer that parents and others can count in the education of children? First, that every child counts. Public schools have legal, ergo societal, requirements to provide every child with a free and appropriate education. If an individual school or district fails to do so, parents have the right to challenge them. Schools are more than schools, they are community centers. A few years ago, my high school was playing football game on a Saturday (Covid years). Adjacent to the campus was a community park where several young men were playing basketball. As our game began, they stopped their activity, sat on the hoods of their cars, watched our players, and cheered for them. Why? Our athletes/students don’t come from the neighborhood, as a magnet school, they come from all over the US largest city in terms of area. Still, they identified with the school in their neighborhood. No alternative option can claim that.
7. Honest self-appraisal. Not happening. Back to #1, although we have a consensus that there is a crisis, an existential crisis for public education, we don’t agree on why and no one seems to want to talk about why that is. From the public ed side, we fight vouchers (there are many reasons to do so including the fraud, grift, etc. that are enabled by these programs) without engaging in asking ourselves why people want to take the money and run.
8. Historical experience. How have we experienced and survived crises like this in the past? The answer is that public education has not. The segregation academies that arose after the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Ed decision is not a past experience to learn from, but the genesis of the current crisis we face.
9. Dealing with failure. Although we could argue with ‘failure,’ the fact is that public school systems have responded to challenges by creating the types of schools the public demands. Within my district, we have schools that are dedicated to academic advanced studies, military style programs, single-sex classes, arts, and more. Parents seeking options will find one in the school system, including an elementary school dedicated to educating dyslexic children.
10. Situation-specific flexibility. Oh no, oh God no. Public education does not have the flexibility to respond to challenges that arise at its various school sites, whether that is denied by state legislatures passing restrictive laws, districts enacting one-size-fits-all policies, or an administrator hell-bent on control at all costs.
11. Core values. Given the gotterdammerung of the current situation, I’m not sure we have core values anymore. Back to #1. What do we all agree upon that is non-negotiable about education? There seems to be nothing.
12. Freedom from constraints. Ah, we can close out with an easy one. No public school system has any freedom from constraints. They come from draconian laws passed by state legislatures, parental demands, activity by dark money funded groups like Moms for Liberty, and the culture wars.

What does it take to survive a crisis however many years it takes and to emerge better for it? Based on these criteria, we had better prepare a funeral for our public schools. A few of them suggest that we will come through the crisis the better for it, but most suggest we are unwilling to face up to the challenge. Once, Rome was considered unassailable despite the Punic Wars, but eventually it was sacked and despoiled. If we want a different outcome, we need to think hard about the crisis we are in.

Saturday, a violent racist young white man decided that it was time for him to murder Black people for being Black. I do not apologize if that’s too blunt a sentence for you to read. That’s what happened.

There is no place on Earth where race-based, ethnic-based, false grievance-based hatred should be tolerated. But our common history as the human species betrays that thought. It is going on in many places, including the United States of America and Jacksonville, Florida.

Sunday, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis showed up at a vigil that featured other community leaders, including state Rep. Angie Nixon and Councilwoman Ju’coby Pittman who represent the area. He was booed.

To his credit, the governor said we have to stop the targeting of people based upon their race.

The crowd was having none of it because that is precisely what this governor has been doing, which is not to say that he wants violence and killing, but he is the proud proponent of what he calls anti-wokeness.

There is much talk going on in the city today. Yes, I live in Jacksonville, which encompasses all of Duval County under the consolidated government that was established in the 1960s. Listening to a popular, local public radio show this morning, that was a point some people made. We need to have these conversations. We need to educate our children. (Others disagreed and called for action.)

But that is exactly what teachers cannot do. Governed by Florida’s anti-woke laws, teachers cannot help children process what happened this weekend. The subject will come up; I remember the early days of Covid when nervous children asked their teachers about the virus and what would happen if they caught it. If you think they are not talking to their teachers about this racist violence directed against Black people and whether they will come into somebody’s crosshairs, you do not understand children.

Children absorb these experiences like we breathe air and they need trusted adults to help them process what they are thinking and feeling.

But all teachers are allowed to do these days is to tell them to dream sweet dreams, to maintain everyone’s comfort, get a pillow from the stack, lie down on the floor, and dream of a better day that will never come.

Washington Irving wrote the tale of a colonial man who fell asleep in the mountains and awoke after the American Revolution to find a very different world. He returns to his village to find his children and a grandchild, who look much like him. His old friends are dead and it isn’t long until he returns to his presleep days of idleness and storytelling.

With a few change of details, we could tell this story of Florida and set it in Jacksonville.

The good ol’ anti-woke days.

When I was young, my college roommate and his friend introduced me to another friend. It was a sunny afternoon in the football stands to cheer on the Blue Hens and see how much hooch we smuggled past the security guards. During the course of the afternoon, the other friend had this to say, “I don’t hate Black people. I like them. I think everyone should own one.”

These are the days of Ron DeSantis. These are the days of white supremacy that would cloak itself in color-blind politics and policies, ones that will never acknowledge the historical, institutional, and systemic racism that infects this nation. We must never, ever talk about it and woe to the teacher who dares to allow this conversation in her classroom.

What white people fear most is that Black people escape from the underclass that serves them. They wonder who will cook their meals, clean their apartments, and wipe their behinds when they get too old to control their bowels.

So we must teach our children a varnished version of history in order that they will never become woke, a word that simply means being aware of how racism works in our society. We must teach our children to find their place, not the one they want, but the one determined for them.

And the anger Black people feel at being targeted in this city? Go back to sleep. Dream sweet dreams. Sleep, sleep, sleep …

Jacksonville Van Winkle. Argue with me if you must, but ask yourself this: why has no one, not the acting Superintendent Dana Kriznar, not the School Board Chair Kelly Coker, not anyone on the school board have a public comment on what happened and how they will handle it in the schools?

To Find a Superintendent. But first some music to set the theme:

We in Jacksonville are looking for a new Superintendent to lead our schools as are many other school districts in Florida. The school board has contracted with the Florida School Board Association to lead a process of developing a profile of the type of superintendent wanted by the community, helping them process the input and develop a job description, and lead a search for candidates. At the conclusion of the process, the school board will decide upon persons to interview on the way to making a hiring decision and extending an offer.

Today was the beginning of that process with the first meeting to which community members, including parents, were invited. It was not well attended, most likely due to the rural location (more cows than people) and the timing for a midday session. But it’s a start.

After an explanation and rundown of the timeline for this process up to the moment the board anticipates making a decision, the board member for the area read a short statement about the purpose during which she emphasized more than once that she would leave the room once she finished so the attendees would feel free to express their ideas.

My purpose in attending was to bring a teacher’s viewpoint to the discussion of what was needed in a new superintendent. One of the most significant stakeholder groups (sorry for the jargon,) teachers are often left out as the district attempts to make a showing of wanting to hear from the community and parents.

As participants, we were asked to answer three questions. Unlike the online survey, which you can answer here, that only gives you preformulated options to choose from, the community meeting allowed open-ended responses. … at least that’s what I remembered. A quick review of the online survey shows that it begins with some preliminary questions as I’ve described before allowing open-ended responses to two of the three open-ended questions: the strengths of the district and the challenges of the district. The online survey does not give an opportunity to provide feedback about the qualifications required.

Question 1: List the strengths and those areas of Duval County Schools that the next superintendent will need to understand and continue to support.

There were many answers. I focused on two: that our school system has diversity and inclusiveness for all students. Every child is welcome in our schools and has a place. Second, that our school system has talented and hardworking teachers.

Question 2: What are the most critical needs and challenges of Duval County Schools that the next superintendent will need to understand and address.

Lots of answers rolled in for this one. This meeting was also held online for people to join remotely. I don’t know how many did, but enough for lots of answers. As a sidebar, this was made possible by the facilitators having someone dedicated to managing the online part, gathering that input, and relaying it to the room via an audio link. It worked unlike a few years ago when school systems tried to make teachers do the same jobs alone in response to having in-person and remote learning options during the pandemic. To Duval County’s credit, they abandoned that idea over the summer.

Issues raised:

• School police being subject to the superintendent’s authority. People thought that they should report to an outside law enforcement agency.
• Need for a variety of programming in all schools, not only the magnet schools. Of particular focus was a desire for CTE or vocational training for students whose path did not lead to college.
• School autonomy to make the decisions that work best for each school versus micromanagement from the district. (That was one of mine.)
• Too much screen time in classrooms that sucks the joy out of learning and leads to discipline issues. (That was also mine.)
• Retention of teachers and pay issues.
• Condition of building facilities. This one surprised me given the half-penny sales tax and the plans for complete rebuilds or renovations of all schools. Perhaps people felt it wasn’t going fast enough or their school wasn’t high enough on the priority list.
• Services needed in neighborhoods with economic/social needs and problems.

There were more, but those are the ones I remember.

Question 3: What personal qualities, professional experience, and other skills should the Board look for in the next superintendent?

This is the one that’s not in the survey. I had no response for this. Over the course of a long career, I have had success in many things in many places. But hiring is not one of them. Nevertheless, at the end of the session, when we had three blue dots to put on the charts to mark the most important qualities, I chose professional educator, apolitical (as in not being political, this one took the facilitator a few moments to understand the response was not a political,) and involved in community.

Then, as we went to leave, the media descended. What I remember as I type this up is that they wanted to know if we felt that we were heard. I said yes, I believed I was heard. Whether that would be true at the next step as the charted responses were shared with the board–I had no idea.

Did I have faith in the board? I said I was optimistic at this point that the board wanted to find the best person for the job and was interested in what the community thought. A fellow participant was a little more reluctant about that.

But I will not prejudge this board or its members despite some of the shenanigans they have indulged as the culture wars wash into their meetings. I will give them the benefit of the doubt until they take that away.

There are more community meetings planned. I highly encourage everyone with a stake in Duval County Public Schools (Jacksonville, FL) to attend one of them.

You almost get it–almost–as to why teachers are leaving the profession and why there are many vacancies to be filled.

Before we begin, let’s deal with the number of teacher vacancies that the school district announced in Tuesday’s board meeting: 258, which is far less than what they have been experiencing at the start of a new school year. The mood was celebratory, even gleeful, that this was the best position they have been in years.

But there’s a reason for that. In Spring budget meetings, when the district projects enrollment for the fall and adjusts the number of teaching positions at each school, the district projected a 20% reduction in enrollment due to the new universal voucher law.

Frankly, I think that’s overly pessimistic, but based on that projection, the district eliminated a lot of teacher positions for the year about to begin. It’s known as surplus. Because of attrition due to retirement, movement to other districts, and relocation out of state, many positions were open where the teachers displaced by surplus could be put.

Thus, the only reason the vacancy number is low is because the district eliminated positions. What happens if students don’t leave in the numbers anticipated?

The district has to restore positions. Don’t be surprised if that 258 number is closer to 750 once the 10-day count is done and September arrives.

You and your panel wouldn’t know this unless you ask the hard questions. Don’t take anything the district says at face value. They will tell you the half of the story they want you to know. You have to get after the other 50%.

Now for why there are vacancies. Not only are teachers leaving the profession, but young people are making the choice not to be teachers and to enter other careers.

Yes, pay is an issue. The citizens of Duval County passed a referendum for an additional one mil of taxation (0.1% of appraised property value) that will mostly be used to supplement salaries. However, the new school year beginning August 14 is the first time this additional pay will show up in paychecks. The additional mil began with last year’s property taxes, the county has been collecting it, but not until this month will the money begin flowing to teachers.

Nevertheless, (my opinion) the pay situation is brighter than it has been in years. People will argue whether it’s enough given what other persons with college degrees earn, but frankly, it’s a 10 to 12% boost for most teachers and that’s a lot. I expect to see a lot less Facebook posts from teachers wondering how they will pay their rent.

It’s more than compensation. Yes, school safety is a concern. However, if the principal is doing it right, the drills are not traumatic for students and teachers. We practice sheltering in place: cover the windows, turn the lights out, squeeze into the hard corner, and get on the floor. Drills are announced clearly, “Code Red. Code Red. Code Red. DRILL.” Everyone knows there’s no actual threat on campus; it’s only practice.

The daily occurrences of school violence is discouraging, though. To work in a school means to wonder if on any given day, it will happen to me. The probability is extremely low, but it’s not zero.

The impact on vacancies is analogous to the U.S. military, which is facing unprecedented recruitment challenges. They are not meeting their goals. Why? Unemployment is at historic lows, real wages (adjusted for inflation) are rising, and high school graduates find that their predecessors may have seen the military as their only worthwhile option for employment, but they have a choice. Also, the ongoing wars of the last 20 years and the prospect of death make the military less attractive as well.

Young people have more options. It’s not only that teachers are leaving the profession; it’s that too few young adults are choosing to enter.

It’s more than compensation and safety. Yes, it’s the fear not only of losing a job, a certificate and a career that would trash a significant investment of time and resources, but also a fear of being charged with a crime for showing a Disney movie in the classroom or reading a book to young children.

The maddening thing is the vagueness of it all and the standard that no child can feel uncomfortable, which leaves teachers vulnerable to the attack of one angry parent even if 30 or 100 parents defend the teacher.

All these things are contributing to the teacher shortage. You and your panel did an admirable job in covering them in your short segment after y’all spent 30 minutes discussing the Trump indictment.

But you’re missing what is even more fundamental. I suppose that is because you talk as journalists who have children in school, have a spouse or a friend as a teacher, and you consider that enough. You’re not getting the inside story, the real story, because you are satisfied with that.

It’s the lack of respect. That is what is truly driving teachers away. It is a culture, a state, a school system, and a district administration that believe that professionally trained teachers do not know what they are doing. Every minute of their day has to be managed, controlled, and directed.

It’s sad what is taking place in Duval County. No one talks about it because they are not in a school everyday walking around seeing what is going on. I was. Children spend all day on screens, doing online curriculums and online assessments. The district has abandoned print textbooks in favor of online versions. That is why every secondary student has to be issued a district laptop. Without it, they have no means of accessing the mandated curriculum for learning.

The district monitors the minutes spent on these programs and will contact a school’s administration if they decide the classrooms are short of the required minutes. How many administrators, feeling their own pressure for performance, will take the heat? Administrators have no job protections. They can be reassigned at a whim and their annual contracts can be non-renewed.

Who’s going to kick back? Another manifestation of disrespect is the weekly inspections that district personnel occasionally join in the classroom. We don’t trust teachers to do their jobs; administrators must continually visit classrooms to be sure. They are required to document the lesson and check off a list as to how well the teacher complied with demands.

They have a tablet for it. The program tracks the amount of time the administrators spent in the classroom to make sure it meets the district minimum requirement. Apparently, the district doesn’t trust school-based administrators either.

Then there is the required daily posting on the whiteboard. Teachers must, according to an agreement between DTU and the district, post three things: the date, the learning objective, and the essential question that guides the day’s learning activities.

But wait! The district doesn’t always respect the agreements it makes with the union, either. Under the former superintendent, there was an additional requirement to write out the standard in full every day. Many of Florida’s education standards are broad and can cover up to six different learning concepts. Teachers were not allowed to leave out the unnecessary words given the focus of the lesson on a particular concept.

The reason given? If teachers aren’t forced to write out the standard in full, they won’t align their instruction to the standard. They won’t do their job in other words.

How insulting! Teachers spend time in required professional development about how to write lesson plans, but when they examine the district curriculum guides, they find everything is determined to the last detail. The curriculum guide is the lesson plan. And yet, they still have to do a copy-and-paste job into the required daily lesson template.

Teachers, like employees everywhere, resent having their time wasted. In the end, all that really matters are the test scores. It will take a separate essay to take apart the assumption many people make, including those on your panel, that test scores are the same as student learning.

But here’s a spoiler alert. Test scores most strongly correlate to zip code. That’s right, students don’t need to actually take the tests for teachers and others to know how they will turn out.

The importance of zip code is that America is segregated into housing patterns based upon household wealth. The richer the people in the zip code, the higher the school’s test scores will be.

You have to dig deeper and ask the hard questions to find this out.

Lastly, your panel correctly noted that teachers are often motivated by their love of children. But they have children, too. It is asking too much of teachers to demand that they sacrifice their children to serve the needs of everyone else’s.

Why should teachers have to not help their children with homework because they took a stack of papers home to grade? Why should teachers miss their children’s school plays, ball games, and other activities because they have to sponsor those activities for other people’s children? When are they allowed to take care of their own needs?

These are the factors your panel missed this morning. Until these issues are acknowledged and addressed, expect the shortage to continue.

As I opened this letter, I will close. You almost get it. Almost.

–Grumpy Old Teacher