In 2002 Florida voters passed the state-wide "Class Size Amendment", infuriating then Gov. Jeb Bush. Now, the GOP legislature is taking aim at accountability for imposing the class size amendment. The latest manoever; to excuse school districts from any penalties when the class size amendment is violated. Guess whose idea, this is? Miami-Dade legislator, Miguel Diaz de la Portilla.
In Miami-Dade, charter schools have emerged as a potent source of political campaign money. The for-profit institutions enlist legislators to help stack the deck against public education. Parents understand that when children are warehoused in classrooms with too many students, the results can be awful. Public school districts should be held accountable to the class size amendment. The cynical bid to free public schools from fines, for failing to follow the law, is just another attempt to kick public education off a cliff.
Sunshine State News reports, "Florida classrooms are required to have 18 or less students in prekindergarten through third grade, 22 or less students in fourth through eighth grade, and 25 or less students in high school classes... As many as 35 districts faced $40.7 million in initial fines before many of them appealed, resulting in a total deduction of $9.4 million, with nine districts having their entire penalty wiped away. For the 44 charter schools that received nearly $2.3 million in initial fines, 41 appealed and 38 had their total fine eliminated, resulting in merely $355,000 in fines for six charter schools."
8 comments:
For my entire life, I have heard that Republicans are going to kill education. (as well as SS, healthcare, medicare, medicaid, childcare, elderly care, pet care, unplanned pregnancy care & school lunches), The Republic will experience a $1.5 Trillion Fiscal Year debt in 2011. What will we spend $3.8 Trillion on in 2011?
Yawn, at the scaremongering.
Miguel just sees a good issue and latched onto it. The local schools are suffering from the double whammy of charter schools without rules and withering funding from the State.
Schools in the suburbs have carved up gyms and cafeterias into classroom space and have forced councilors into the classroom to work for free - many of them having never taught or being out of the classroom for decades.
The legislature keeps the system afloat with dreaded stimulus dollars while decrying federal aid as "wasteful spending" while gutting state funds and somehow it is the fault of local schools? Punish them? What sense does that make?
Yes, voters wanted smaller classroom sizes, but they were not aware of the unintended consequences of amending the constitution to put caps on class size. One example is that if you have 26 students qualifying for an AP class, but the cap is 25, the school has the choice of leaving one child out of that class or opening yet another class to be able to include that child. There is no leeway with a mandated number, as opposed to a suggested number. If you leave the kid out, he doesn't receive the education he needs. If you open another class, assuming you have the room, you then have to pay an additional teacher. This is just one example. The state mandated class size but doesn't fund the individual schools to handle the adjustments, then fines the schools for not complying. It's a catch 22 situation for schools. Fining the schools when they don't even have the money to implement the rule adds insult to injury. No wonder our public schools are falling apart. The bigger problem is the out and out waste of our tax dollars in the public school system to begin with. There are far too many "administrators" at the top making bloated salaries and outrageous perks, while the teachers are underpaid and stressed to their limits. In order to make the system viable there needs to be a complete overhaul of the school district from the top down, starting with firing the dead wood (including much of the staff of the school board) and bad teachers, and giving the individual schools more money to spend at the discretion of the principals and the EESAC committees. Once you have REAL reform (and not just more useless "programs" to justify the money they pour down the drain), and start teaching each individual child to his or her strengths instead of trying to churn out cookie cutter kids who can pass the FCAT but have no work skills whatsoever, only then will the public school system show improvement. Every new wave of "reform" legislation passed by the state, and now the federal government, in the last 100 years has resulted in utter failure and contributed to the decline of education. Teachers need to be encouraged to simply get back to old fashioned teaching and not be political pawns.
Of course, this is way too simple an idea for politicians of either party to grasp. Politics has no place in education, but it doesn't stop them from using the school system to their political advantage. No wonder parents are looking for alternatives to public schools! They are caught in an endless maze of frustration.
Maybe the teachers unions might want to capitulate a little on healthcare and pension contributions like most private sector workers. Then let see what possibilities the state school budget brings. At last calculation total state budget for K-12 divided by number of students in state = +/- $8000 per student. I think there is enough money it is just poorly allocated and school districts have accumulated a ton of administration instead of teaching resources.
Case in point, Federal Dept of Education has a budget of $60 billion a year. Not one person in that department actually teaches children. They just do studies and allocate grants and money on projects they deem valid from their perch in DC.
This blog always talks about the greed of developers & sugar barons, but there is a lot of greed in the public sector as well.
POLITICS ARE IN EDUCATION, GENIUS! EVERYTHING IN THIS COUNTRY DEPENDS ON A DAMN POLITICAL PROCESS, EXCEPT FOR TOTALLY AUTONOMOUS BODIES! MY GOD, HOW DID WE GET SO MANY DAMN STUPID PEOPLE IN THIS STATE? And, now, strap on the seat belts, off goes Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, A CARBON COPY OF HIS CROOKED BROTHER. HOW CAN THE VOTERS BE HAT STUPID?
I did not write this post.
If I wrote it - there would have been a picture! Why do I always get blamed for Gimleteye's posts?
I think we need a "Bennifer" type name for you as a couple, like "GODY-EYE". It could be a verb (i.e., don't GODY-EYE me! I did not write that!)
A funny thing is happening here at Eye on Miami, Republican rants from roving crusaders spewing the talking points -- from other cities -- are going to our spam folder. I think I am going to stop looking at the folder, it is working pretty well in my view.
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