ICYMI: Corcoran and the FLBOE Want to Take Over Duval Public Schools. Your District Could Be Next.

Last week, Florida’s appointed State Board of Education cheered on their appointed Commissioner of Education, Richard Corcoran, when he suggested they ask the legislature for emergency powers allowing the state to override Duval County’s duly elected school board and “literally take over the district.” Why? Because when given three options to address student needs at struggling schools, Duval County didn’t pick the option Mr. Corcoran wanted them to… which was to turn their public schools over to an out-of-state, corporate charter chain, specifically to IDEA Academy, a recently identified Schools of Hope Operator.

During the 2017 legislative session, then Speaker Corcoran championed “Schools of Hope” (HB7069), a program designed to entice out of state corporate charter chains to come to Florida, presumably to offer a better alternative to students in struggling schools and low income neighborhoods. Arguing they had already “tried everything else” to help these schools, which had repeatedly scored low on state mandated assessments and Florida’s school grade system, lawmakers (like then Rep. Manny Diaz Jr.) declared an “emergency” claiming “we need to address these students now.” HB7069 identified failing schools as those scoring below a C two or more years in a row, eliminated the “district-managed” turnaround plan option (which had seen some success previously) and gave struggling schools 3 choices: contract with an external operator, close the school and reassign the students to another school or close the school and re-open as a charter school with a “demonstrated record of effectiveness.” It is the last option that Commissioner Corcoran wants to force Duval to take for Northwestern Middle School.

Northwestern Middle School serves a student population that is 100% low income and 95% minority, primarily African American. The school has scored a D or an F on Florida’s school grade calculation, every year since 2008. Duval’s new Superintendent (hired 10 months ago), Dr. Diana Greene, explained the current situation at Northwestern (you can read her presentation here). The district chose to work with an external operator, Educational Directions, who specializes in turnaround programs. Per Dr. Greene, additional resources were provided, including additional Assistant Principals, wrap-around services through three community partnerships, after-school and weekend tutoring, a math coach, math interventionist and additional teachers and additional security personnel.

Despite these interventions, progress monitoring data is predicting another “D” grade for Northwestern Middle this year. As explained by Dr. Greene, if the external operator option doesn’t work, the new plan for Northwestern Middle school will be to:

• Redistrict all 6th grade students to eligible schools for the 19-20 school year.
• Provide Opportunity Scholarships (which allow students to transfer to, with transportation, a higher performing public school) to the remaining seventh and eight graders.
• Close the school at the end of the 19-20 school year and repurpose it as a K-5 or K-6 elementary school

Wrong choice, per Commissioner Corcoran who clearly wants the school (and 9 others in Duval) to be handed over to the corporate charter chain from Texas: IDEA Academy, a “no-excuses” charter school founded by two Teach for America alumnae. IDEA Academy was recently offered Schools of Hope operator status and plans to open schools in Hillsborough and, apparently, they want to be in Duval as well. You can watch the discussion between the Commissioner and Dr. Greene at 2:26:00.

The Commissioner asked Dr. Greene why taking those 10 schools and giving them to IDEA Academy wasn’t discussed. Dr. Greene replied, in the months since she arrived in Duval, she has made changes and, if those changes aren’t effective, they will discuss charter conversion. She noted there are a number of charter schools in the same area and they have the same school grades as the struggling district-managed schools.

The Commissioner reminded Dr. Greene that she did not have an IDEA Academy, who “has philanthropy” in Jacksonville and is willing to come in… why not give 5 of the schools to IDEA? Is the superintendent afraid of a little competition?
 
Dr. Greene assured the Commissioner that Duval county has 40 charters and is not afraid of competition. However, she has been in the communities, she believes the schools can overcome these challenges and she believes their communities want to fight for their schools, so, as their superintendent, she wants to fight for them.
 
The Commissioner does not share the superintendent’s optimism and believes she should “go aggressively in another direction,” asking “What are we so afraid of?” He said “I’m not asking you to go with some school that’s already been in your district and not succeeding. I’m asking you to go with someone who’s absolutely succeeded with 60,000 kids identical to these.” 

For the record, IDEA Academies do NOT serve kids identical to Duval’s. According to their application in Hillsborough, 89% of students served by IDEA are Hispanic and only 5.5 percent are African American. Duval’s Northwestern is over 90% African American. True, both student populations are poor, but not “identical.” Also, despite HB7069 passing in 2017, Florida’s first School of Hope is yet to be built and demonstrate effectiveness in Florida’s test-focused accountability system. The first IDEA Academy in Hillsborough County is scheduled to open in 2021. Believing they can reproduce their Texas results in Florida’s harsh accountability system is a leap of faith.

Commissioner Corcoran then accused Dr. Greene of never giving the local communities a chance to choose IDEA. Dr. Greene insisted the corporation came to meet with the community and she did not turn them away. She also noted they have not submitted an application which, if they completed the process and their application met all the criterion, they would likely be approved. She noted six new charter school applications were approved at the last Duval board meeting.

At this point FLBOE Chair, Marva Johnson, interrupted the discussion and asks whether they (the state Board of Education) could just take a portion of these schools, give them to IDEA, and then compare the outcomes moving forward. She suggested this would be an “interesting opportunity,” saying “it might give us a little petri dish to do some testing on what models get the fastest results.” She asks the Commissioner whether they have the authority to do that… his answer: no, saying “if I held the cards they’d be open tomorrow, I don’t have that authority.”

He doesn’t have the authority because the Florida Constitution grants that authority to locally elected school boards. But it appears, the Commissioner plans to change that…

In his final statement, Corcoran called Dr. Green’s testimony “a travesty of justice” and told his board:

“And so… we will go back to the drawing board and we will find ways to hold these districts accountable and if it means they never get approved for DA (Differentiated Accountability, or “turnaround plans”) and that’s the highest level of punishment we can come up with or we go back to the legislature and find a way to get them to give us some sort of emergency rules to go over there and literally take over the district.”

https://thefloridachannel.org/videos/5-22-19-board-of-education-meeting/ at ~3:15:00

There appeared to be universal agreement by the appointed FLBOE members. They are eager to pursue the possibility of district takeover, allowing them to give local public schools away to corporate charter chains, like IDEA Academy. Expect legislation filed next session that will allow such state takeover of local school districts.

If our public schools are allowed to be taken over by an appointed state board of school choice/privatizers, stripping control from our duly elected school boards, allowing the “giveaway” of OUR public schools to charter corporations, then local control of public education will be lost. We encourage everyone to stand up for Duval because once they’ve come for Duval, your schools could be next.