Tag: Billy Townsend
Sheriff Judd seems to misunderstand his own law. So let’s start over, as serious and collaborative people.
The “School Security” law your legislators and Polk Sheriff Grady Judd recently produced swallows itself in fundamental and lethal contradiction. Ideally, all stakeholders would recognize this and simply start over again. Ideally, this time, lawmakers and Judd would seek good faith collaboration with subject matter experts in school operations. But we don’t live in an ideally governed state. Thus, it’s…
Introducing “Education and the English Language,” a periodic series.
More than any other space in American public thought and comment, I find “education” beset with corrupt, unhelpful, or dishonest uses of language. Start with the word itself. We can come much closer as a society to defining with clarity the concept of “war,” for all its euphemisms, than we can the concept of “education.” War essentially means killing people…
The graduation rate conundrum, part 1: To cheer or not to cheer for Polk’s good news? Yes.
Last week, the Polk County School District received some of the best education scoreboard news we’ve had around here in a long time. Our high school graduation rate increased in 2016-17 at more than double the rate of the state — 3.6 percentage points to 1.6. This is first time I can remember a significant Polk measurement surpassing a state…
How money matters in community education, part 1: 1200 teachers to hire
This series of posts is primarily aimed at Polk’s business community and the wider community that doesn’t follow the intricacies of education policy and politics. It’s aimed at answering some basic questions: What are the real world consequences of years of self-defeating state stinginess in education funding? What does money buy? Why are community districts talking about money? Buying the…
The line must be drawn here. Start with Level raises.
As of today, I consider it mandatory that we honor previously established Level raises (sometimes known as steps) for all Polk School District employees. It will cost us about $4.3 million. We have the money to do it. It’s a simple choice between fulfilling our core function for our community or maintaining a “growing savings account” of dead money that…
A Lake Wales Vision, part 2: choice liberated from the fraudulent Florida model
Here is the link to Part 1: The Future of Lake Wales is in Lake Wales, not Jefferson County. What follows is part 2. ——————————————————————————————————————- Lake Wales fascinates, excites, and frustrates me for the same reason. All the pieces exist there, right now, for an entirely new, community-based model of education with something for just about everyone. This model could equitably and…
A Bok-McLaughlin vision, part 1: the future of Lake Wales should be Lake Wales. Not Jefferson County.
I still sincerely believe we can make a deal that unites the Lake Wales middle-school age community. But I’m less optimistic than I was a couple weeks ago. I’m very troubled to learn that Lake Wales Charter Schools wants to take over the Jefferson County schools. Jefferson County is a tiny rural county near Tallahassee. It is 280 miles away…
The Roosevelt process: good government is often messy
Roosevelt Academy in Lake Wales is an anomaly. It’s essentially a 6-12th grade district magnet school for ESE students. It’s not actually a magnet school; but that’s what it most closely resembles in enrollment structure. There are few, if any, similar schools in Florida. Kids apply to the Roosevelt program, which for many, many years has quietly provided a job…
Impasse, part 1: Listen to your School Board members lay out their visions of public service
The video below comes from the Dec. 13, 2016, School Board work session — my first work session as a board member. This hour-long excerpt covers the discussion of School Board Attorney Wes Bridges’ three-year contract. This contract automatically renews every year. It has no practical mechanism for removing Bridges without paying him at least $450,000. Lynn Wilson and I…
Join the happy parent rebellion, Adam Putnam. We. Are. Winning.
If you doubt this campaign is making a major difference, if you doubt that they hear us in Tallahassee as well as Bartow, listen to Adam Putnam. The likely Republican nominee for governor in 2018 had this to say very recently at the Florida Chamber of Commerce Future of Florida Forum. “We have begun to lose the support of the…
