OCPS: School Daze
- Details
- Category: Education
- Published: Sunday, 18 August 2013 01:57
Monday, August 19, a new school year starts in Orange County, Fl. So while driving around Orange County, watch out for the school board members. They are dazed and confused running around masquerading as if they know what they are doing. Clearly, they do not. You would think that with all the hustle and bustle and years of practice they would have gotten it right by now. The entire Florida educational system is whacked. The School Board has to pick heads or tails within a lot of different situations. Some of those situations overlap and conflict and board members have a hard time finding a good solution. Just look at some of the people and issues they have to deal with.
Jeb Bush- Jeb Bush obviously supports ALEC. American Legislative Exchange Council is an organization that is funded by major corporations like Walmart and big Wall Street banks. This group supports deregulation, privatization, and whatever else benefit the big corporations. Jeb Bush gave a talk to the
ALEC group and he spelled out his agenda that closely resembles that of ALEC's. Bush's agenda included school vouchers, charter schools, deregulation of teaching and more, all in the name of profit. Students, parents and of course the local economy can all go to hell, or live in poverty.
Gov. Scott - Gov. Scott has his own personal questionable ethnical practices to deal with, and yet he leads a band of misfits in Florida State Government. The number of high ranking staff members who suddenly left office speaks volumes about Gov. Scott's character and his vision. You know the saying, 'You are who you associate with.' Gov. Scott looked high and low and then even lower to find Tony Bennett to run the state's educational system. Mr. Bennett lasted only a few months before his past failures caught up with him and he had to get outta town. So now OCPS and all state school boards and our children are left twisting in the wind once again because of the failures of our Gov. Scott.
Racist Rating System - The new guidelines were approved by the State Board of Education. In six years, 2018, the target will not be 100% success, but rather a range of moving targets based on race and ethnicity. Asian students target is 90%, white students target is 88%, Hispanic students target is 81% and Black student target is 74%. Those targets are their goals for reading levels. What this means is that every Black person will be viewed as less intelligent than anyone else. Your diploma means that you have 74% capacity of other people. You lose for life. More on the racist rating system here
The Settlement Agreement - The Settlement Agreement is a Circuit Court approved agreement, made between the Orange County School Board and the Orange County NAACP. The 2010 Orange County School Board members voted on issues which this document clearly said they could not. The school board members allowed Superintendent Barbara Jenkins and School Board lead attorney Woody Rodriquez, to lead them down a dark rabbit hole. None of them took the time to read the actual documents when they voted to close Richmond Heights Elementary School. Reading is Fundamental, but your school board doesn't read or they just don't understand what they are reading.
Musical Chairs - The fiasco of moving students back and forth between schools is laughable and reminiscent of flip flopping the school bus schedules for elementary school and high school for one year in order to save money when the school board have millions of dollars of surplus money. In this 'waggle' the Orange County School Board lies to the community and completely reneges on promises made. In 2002, they promised not to close Richmond Heights Elementary if they were granted a tax rate hike. They even sweetened the deal by saying that they would rebuild or remodel the school. They were given the increase, but decided they needed the money elsewhere and closed the school anyway. Here is how they did it.
1. Close Richmond Heights Elementary School at school year's end 2012 - 2013
2. Move the students from the now closed Richmond Heights Elementary School to Eccleston Elementary School for school year 2013 - 2014.
3. Start enlargement of Eccleston Elementary School to warehouse students coming from Richmond Heights Elementary School.
4. Move the students from Washington Shores Elementary to the closed Richmond Heights Elementary School for school year 2013 - 2014.
5. Start construction of new Washington Shores Elementary School 2013 - 2014.
6. Return Washington Shores Elementary students to the newly built school from being warehoused at the closed Richmond Heights Elementary 2014 - 2015.
Yeah, this is what your Orange County School Board is doing. Who designed this project? With this type leadership, the students suffer, the community suffers but someone is making big bucks. Who is the project manager here?
Island Zones - This is an Orange County Public School concept where they pick an area that students live close to a school, and then transfer those students miles away to another school to make sure that the other school has the full enrollment capacity and the first school has low enrollment capacity. (I told you this was confusing)
Busing - Don't get me started
Orange County NAACP - Local branch of a national organization that is doing all that it can to hurt the local Black population.
So now you have just a few of the issues that the Orange County School Board members and staff have to deal with. The entire list of possible problem points is long and very confusing. Most board members don't understand or don't care about the plight that the citizens have to adjust to when these lives changing decisions are made. Orange County School Board members only make decisions based on the slanted observations of the lobbyist or big business interest. The parents and kids are the least of the board's considerations and they are also are in a daze.
The Orange County School Board is accountable to no one except the people who elected them. Unfortunately, they don't respect those people until they want something. Right now, they want you to extend the tax rate that was granted to them in 2002. The school board didn't follow through with what they promised then. You shouldn't trust them to follow through with promises now.