Public School Success in Jefferson County, FL
Some Florida School Grade news:
For the first time in 25 years, Jefferson County’s K-12 public school has earned a “B.”
While I remain a sceptic regarding Florida’s arbitrary school grade system in general, today I will celebrate Jefferson’s “B” because it was earned just two year’s after the end of the failed State takeover of Jefferson County Schools.
The success at Jefferson came under the leadership of Principal Jackie Pons but he credits the success to Jefferson’s teachers. In today’s Tallahassee Democrat:
“What helped us accomplish this was the great team of teachers and support staff that we put together, it always comes down to having great teachers in the classroom,” Pons told the Tallahassee Democrat. “We always say in education that all children can learn, and I challenged our team on that.”
The school district was placed under Somerset Academy Inc., a charter academy tasked with turning the school around for five years. It never did, so the school was returned to the local community under one condition: It needed to earn a C. Under Pons, it did.
“For the last 20 years, Jefferson County Schools has been under so much adversity. This is a great day for Jefferson, considering all they’ve been through,” Pons said. “This is so important for the community.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jefferson-county-k-12-school-090735871.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
In 2017, then state representative Manny Diaz Jr. and then Speaker of the House Richard Corcoran made Jefferson schools the the poster child for school takeovers when they passed HB7069, which limited a chronically low-performing school’s turnaround options to 1. close the school and redistribute the student population to higher performing schools, 2. hire an external operator to manage the school turnaround or 3. convert the school to a charter school. You probably recognize Diaz and Corcoran as Florida’s current and former Commissioners of Education, both appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis.
The story of Jefferson County’s charter conversion was documented in WLRN’s excellent, award winning series “Chartered: Florida’s First Private Takeover Of A Public School System.”
“In the summer of 2016, the rural Jefferson County school district was in a dual state of academic and financial emergency.
That gave Republican-appointed state regulators at then-Gov. Rick Scott’s Department of Education enormous power over a school system enrolling only about 800 of the state’s nearly 3 million public school students.
The department engineered an unprecedented private takeover of the Panhandle county’s schools, which officials argued was necessary to ensure the children there finally had access to a quality education after more than a decade of public school failure. They describe themselves as advocates for the “voiceless.”
But the elected superintendent, school board members and others in the small community argue the will of the voters was tossed out to make way for Florida’s first all-charter school district.”
https://chartered.wlrn.org/how-district-lost-public-schools/
In a nutshell, after 2 decades of failing school grades, the Department of Education forced the conversion of Jefferson County schools to charter schools, removing any local control from their elected school board or superintendent. Then Rep Diaz was actively involved in the Jefferson charterization. Diaz was employed by Academica and Somerset (a subsidiary of Academica) was the ONLY approved charter school applicant at the time and “won” the 5-year turnaround contract that made Jefferson County the state’s first all-charter school district. While in the Florida House, Diaz funneled large amounts of money towards the Jefferson Somerset charters which, after some small initial measurable improvements, fell back into “D’ range. When their 5 year contract came to an end in July 2022, Somerset walked away from their Jefferson commitment/experiment.
With Somerset abandoning their efforts, the Jefferson School district began to make plans to transition its schools back to locally-run, locally governed public schools but Governor DeSantis’ Department of Education, under the leadership of Commissioner Corcoran, pressured the district to hire an external operator to oversee the transition, to be paid for with COVID relief funds. The selection of the external operator resulted in a scandal, with FLDOE insiders manipulating and bidding on the contract, the resignation of long time State Board of Education member, Andy Tuck, and a Federal Grand Jury investigation into bid rigging, suggesting involvement by both Corcoran and former Chancellor Jacob Oliva (who now serves as Arkansas’ Secretary of Education).
Reeling from scandal, in February 2022, the FLDOE reluctantly allowed Jefferson to regain local control of its schools but only under one big condition, that they raise the school grade to a “C” in the following year. They did.
And now Jefferson has achieved something remarkable… with their 2024 “B” they have become the poster child for local control and public school success. Again, congratulation to Jefferson County in regaining control of their most important community asset, their public school.
For the record, things didn’t go quite so well in nearby Escambia County, where Warrington Middle school, now known as Charter School USA’s Warrington Preparatory Academy after the State essentially forced the school to undergo charter conversion in 2023, remained a “D” school.
For several years, the charterization of Warrington Middle School has been a focus of the Florida State Board of Education (FLBOE) (who appear to be completely unaware of the previous Jefferson debacle). Prior to the pandemic, the Warrington Middle had received a D or F on state assessments for eight consecutive years. In July 2021, the FLBOE issued an ultimatum, if the district’s turnaround plan did not earn Warrington Middle a “C” in 2022, the school would face closure or charter conversion. The 2022 grade remained a “D” and the process to select a charter school operator began. The Escambia School Board had previously searched for a charter school willing to come in and manage the school before Charter Schools USA (CSUSA), one of Florida’s largest (and most politically connected) for-profit corporate charter chains, applied with the full support of the Florida Department of Education and the State Board of Education (FLBOE). The FLBOE essentially adopted the conversion of Warrington Middle as a pet project, calling the superintendent and school board chair before the Board multiple times when charter contract negotiations with CSUSA stalled. One of the largest sticking points was CSUSA’s plan to expand the school to K-12 and, with time, remove the preference for the students within the existing Warrington Middle School boundaries – which would ultimately result in the district having to provide bus transportation for those students to surrounding schools. Some students would need to be bussed to a middle school over an hour away from their community. Despite considerable pressure from the FLDOE and FLBOE to agree to CSUSA’a stipulations (threatening school board salaries), the school board was adamant that the zoned students continue to have access to Warrington Middle and, ultimately, CSUSA promised to do so and the conversion agreement was made. When the newly named Warrington Preparatory Academy opened in August 2023, the FLBOE members celebrated its newly painted walls and school uniforms.
In April 2024, Governor DeSantis signed HB1285 into law, simplifying the process of converting a turnaround school into a charter school, in response to the Warrington “experience.” Prior to the bill signing, DeSantis held a press conference at Warrington Preparatory Academy, complaining that there had been “a lot of gnashing of teeth” and “dragging the feet” and “it took forever to be able to do the charter contract.” As reported by WUWF:
“If you have a school that’s getting F-graded grades, we need to remediate very quickly,” stated the governor. “You have to execute that path forward.”
Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz echoed the governor’s sentiment.
“At the end of the day, we have to focus on the students and what happens to these students who are sitting for years in a failing school, not getting what they need,” he said. “They do not get that time back.””
https://www.wuwf.org/local-news/2024-04-18/after-lengthy-warrington-charter-school-transition-new-florida-law-simplifies-the-conversation-process-of-failed-turnaround-schools
Sigh… surely, Manny remembers the Jefferson debacle…
When school grades were released this summer, Escambia had made significant progress in eliminating its “D” and “F” schools. In 2023, Escambia had 9 “”D” or “F” schools. This summer, CSUSA’s Warrington Preparatory Academy was the only school on the list to receive a D. Per their contract, they will have 3 more years to earn a “C.”
By the way, Warrington Elementary, in the same neighborhood but still under district management, managed to raise its school grade from an “F” to a “C” (congratulations to them).
Wishing the best of luck to the middle schoolers in the Warrington community. Hoping their students get what they need with their CSUSA charter because, like Manny reminded us, “They do not get that time back.”
Glad that Jefferson is back on track.