Amendment 8: A Whole Lot of Crazy Going On

In Martin County, people are waking up and fighting for the future of public education. Last week, voters elected a long time educator, Victoria Defenthaler, defeating the incumbent, Rebecca Negron. Ms. Negron, the wife of Florida Senate President Joe Negron, serves on a rogue, ed reform school board association (Florida Coalition of School Board Members – FCSBM) and was well funded by outside Political Action Committees, who filled local mail boxes with attack ads, spending more than a quarter of a million dollars in her failed attempt to retain her seat (read more here).

In April, the Martin County School Board approved, with a vote of 4-1, to approve the application for Erika Donalds and Shawn Frost’s Treasure Coast Classical Academy (TCCA). Ms. Donalds and Mr. Frost are also part of Ms. Negron’s rogue FCSBM. The week before the recent primary election, the new charter school’s contract was brought before the board for a vote. The public input was dominated by conversation regarding the new classical charter school and by speakers urging the Board and fellow citizens to vote against Ms. Donalds’ Florida CRC sponsored Amendment 8, should it reappear on the November ballot. (Read more about Amendment 8 here, here and here)

For those concerned about Amendment 8 and its intent of stripping of local control of public schools by allowing a state bureaucracy to establish, operate, supervise, and control publicly funded schools outside of the control of duly elected school boards, this August 21, 2018 Martin County School Board Meeting is worth watching.

Martin County School Board member, Tina McSoley, District 4, was the sole dissenting vote for the TCCA application in April. She explained her continuing concern with the charter school contract, feeling the school was not at all innovative, had inadequate academic expectations and was not financially sound. She explained that her opposition was in the interest of protecting taxpayers: “Martin County tax payer dollars will be diverted. Your public schools will continue to crumble… They do NOT offer new and innovative opportunities.”

At around 2:05:00, Ms. Soley took issue with Ms. Donalds’ published response to a Leon County judge ordering Amendment 8 removed from the Florida ballot for being “Affirmatively Misleading”:

“Mrs Donalds states… “The group suing to remove Amendment 8 from the ballot fundamentally opposes empowering families to choose the education setting that best fits their child,” she said “Despite the bunk they’ve spread, I hope voters will be able to make their own decision in November. It is disgusting how many misrepresentations the opposition is willing to put forth to block student-centered school choice options.”

I am a conservative. I have been to pro-life rallies. I have six children. I have homeschooled some of them. I am all about school choice, but NOT at the expense of taxpayers, not in an irresponsible manner and it is not a pretty word that you throw around because, let’s face it people, we cannot give individual choices to 18,000+ students. It is NOT financially sound, it is not financially reasonable, it is irresponsible. So when, if this Amendment 8 were to pass and Tallahassee is going to get control of your local schools, is 20 charters enough? Is 40 choices enough? How many choices… I want you to ask yourselves, how many choice are enough for our 18,000 students? What if we have a hundred choices but we still have ONE student who none of those work for them… let’s open another school.

At some point we are going to have to wake up. This is your dollars. So I’m … very, very aware that I will likely be out-voted tonight but I will continue to protect these taxpayers and if a charter school wants to come in this county that ACTUALLY has innovative ideas, that is actually not funneling money from our public school students, that is actually not funneling money from other schools in Martin County, that can actually run their own administration, that can actually train their own teachers because they are so qualified to do it that they offer something that these amazing people at our district staff can’t, then I will be the first one standing up there saying “We need to let these people in.” But this is not that school and the same people that are opening this school are the same people that are doing it across the State of Florida and, eventually, there’s going to be nothing left to save. And the charters will fail and the public schools will fail and everything else will fail because there’s not enough money for any of them…

In Year Six, they will be fully open K-12 school; a controlled open enrollment from your friendly local, I should say state, not local, legislature… this is a K-12 school that means any St. Lucie County student enrolling in this school in kindergarten will be able to stay there through 12th grade, at OUR taxpayer expense, at OUR ESE students expense, at OUR test administration time, you name it, it’s there…

Republicans, you better start looking at what OUR party is doing. And Democrats, you better start getting pretty loud. And everybody in between better stop ignoring both parties and pay attention cuz there’s a whole lot of crazy going on.

By Year Five, 768  seats will exist in TCCA, multiply that by more than $7,000, because we have to assume we’re not going to get more money from Tallahassee so it may even be less, and figure out how much money is going to leave Martin County School District to go to this school…”

In case you were wondering, 768 x $7,000 = $5,376,000… every year… leaving Martin County School District to go to this school.

We agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Soley:

• Republicans, you better start looking at what YOUR party is doing.
• And Democrats, you better start getting pretty loud.
• And everybody in between better stop ignoring both parties and pay attention cuz there’s a whole lot of crazy going on.

It is time for citizens to join Martin County, rise up and defend our public schools.

Tomorrow, 9/4/18, the Florida Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments regarding the appeal of the Leon County ruling in the League Of Women Voters lawsuit to remove Amendment 8 from the ballot.  Pay attention. Stay tuned.