Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / Carol Cleaver on SAZAC

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Carol Cleaver on SAZAC · Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog

• Rick Outzen: I'm Rick Ostman, you know I'm a big supporter of public education. My kids are products of public education. My daughter teaches in middle school and my grandchildren are in public education. it is right now is an interesting time. Scammy County School District has lost over the you know three or four or five years over seven thousand students. and it is almost eight hundred this year, which means they've lost over seven million dollars. in income because each student is worth about nine thousand dollars. It's not that they've left the area. more than likely they have taken advantage of the voucher program so their parents can teach them at home or put them in whatever school they want to put them in. and the school district is struggling to figure out how to handle it. They are started they want to right size the district and the way that they're going about it is a process that's been used gosh, going back 20 years at least, and it is using it's a CASAC committee, the School Advisory, no, the School Attendant Zone Advisory Committee, CAZAC. They had their second meeting this week. I attended it the first meeting, we had assistant superintendent told the committee that the school district was going to close Lincoln Park Elementary and Warrington Elementary Schools. because they had less than 300 students. I wrote about it. It made a different kind of meeting this time. I'm very fortunate today to have Carol Cleaver with me. She is president of the teachers union. She is also the secretary of the CAZAC committee. She volunteered for that role. What was your understanding of the CAZAC committee? tried to say that it was misunderstood. But what was your understanding? Carol Cleaver: My understanding when Mr. Leonard called me this summer and and said that they anticipated that we would be needing to have this committee and that he asked me to serve on it as the president of our employer union. And my my understanding was that we would be there to work collectively on the best way To use the facilities and use the resources that we have in our county, that we would need to make some changes because we could see that there we were already in the midst of a financial crisis and that it certainly wasn't going to be getting any better. So my understanding was that I would be serving on a committee where we would be doing that work together, looking at information and trying to come to decisions about the best way to use the resources that we have given the the financial crisis we find ourselves in. Rick Outzen: Well at the meeting this week, Assistant Superintendent Sean Dennis sort of backed up a little bit, in that th th the decision isn't final yet, is what he said. and he gave some instances where the CAZAC committee over the years made recommendations or asked that they reconsider closing some schools. do you feel like the decision's final? Carol Cleaver: I do not feel like the decision is final. He did give a chronology, if you will, and I appreciated that because I've only been here since twenty thirteen. He gave a chronology of times where they had initially recommended to close a school and then ended up not closing a school in the past. I did work at Ferry Pass Middle School for thirteen years, so I certainly was there when we absorbed the students from Woodham Middle School. So I know firsthand what this can do to a community and what it can do to a school. so I was reassured to hear that we'll be looking at attendance zones and that maybe it's not final, but but I d I don't know. I d knowing what I know about the school district's finances, it does feel inevitable that we might have to close some buildings. Rick Outzen: You know, the c the concern that I wrote about on the blog this week is I I focused on Lake and Park just because I have been watching it for a while. it is a school that's been on the chopping block, gosh, you know, since twenty twelve, I guess, based on what Dennis said. and they downgraded it to just K through three and or K through two and focused on that and then they came back a few years later. And brought it back to a full elementary school. The school has been a C. It was an F when they changed to the new grading system, which it caught a lot of schools off guard. But this year, this past year, they were a B, and they did it primarily by having so much success in gains in mathematics and science, and particularly with the lowest 25%. They were in the top 10, the top 15. in in that area. And then what bothered me was that if you the closest schools that that could that seem to have capacity, we don't know how that magic sauce is made yet, but the ones that seem to have capacity are Brentwood and Inslee. Inslee is the lowest performing school, so you're gonna send kids to it that have been fighting and and teachers that have been working so hard, you could send them there or Brentwo Brentwood which is in the twenty of the thirty four schools there in the mid twenties, it it just seemed to be an unfair situation. how do the teachers feel? I mean it seems I would hate to wake up one morning and and hear they've already decided they're gonna close my school. Carol Cleaver: Right. well I do know that Mr. Dennis said again last night in the meeting that the s previous SAZAC committees have recommended that n no school is closed before staff and parents and community are involved and spoken with. I haven't had the opportunity I I have been to Lincoln Park recently, but not since the convening of the SAZAC committee. I spoke last night though with the the teachers that attended the meeting from Warrington Elementary. They're certainly very concerned. They're concerned about their community. They're concerned about the students that go there. and and where how how they're gonna get to their new schools, what type of culture is going to be at their new schools, because every every school ends up becoming a little bit of its own family unit. And they're very protective of that, understandably so. what I feel like I can do as the president of their union by sitting on this committee is I can ensure that in the event that a school does close, we follow our contract, which guarantees that these teachers are able to get the first pick of schools when we have our priority transfer event. And I I would love to see i i if a school like Warrington Elementary or Lincoln Park does end up closing, th you know, those teachers at some of the schools that are that are close to well where where their former students I guess you could say would be going to. I know that that definitely happened when Woodham closed and we absorbed some of the teachers and students into our our building. I know when Warrington Middle went through turnaround for the first time. Many of those teachers came to Fairy Pass and ended up teaching with us. So I'd like to hope that the teachers that are already contributing to that family environment, that family culture at the school where they're at right now could maybe carry that on a little bit for the students at their new school. Rick Outzen: All right, let's let's I want to when we come back and we're gonna have to take a break just for a second, but when we come back, Commissioner Lumen May appeared at the CAZAC committee this week and he I thought some of his points were particularly poignant, what it means to a neighborhood as well as what it means to children. We'll go ahead and take a break and we'll be right back. I'm Rick Alton. This is Rick's Vlog Live. Carol Cleaver: Mm-hmm. Rick Outzen: I got Carol Cleaver. She is on the CAZAC committee, the one who's looking at attendance zones for all the public schools, particularly for two schools that have been marked or targeted for closure. I I'll use my words, Warrington Elementary and Lincoln Park Elementary. Why do you think elementary schools are what's being targeted here? Carol Cleaver: Well, the we've already consolidated a lot at the middle school level, right? And that's kind of what I was referring to that I went through. I think the year was twenty seventeen. We did some consolidation in middle schools at that point. There's really not a lot more left to consolidate anymore, especially now that Warrington Middle has moved on to become a prep. Rick Outzen: That's right. And all the high schools are almost maxed out as attendants and the middle schools are pretty packed. Yeah, th that would make sense. two things that jumped out at me, and we talked a little bit about it in the break. One, Commissioner Lemon May came to this meeting and he was there primarily because the school closures continue to seem to be happening in district three, in the in the urban neighborhoods that that are part of his district. He said one thing that really He said two things. One is that you can't work your way out of a financial crisis by closing things. and that the other thing he said was that when you close a school you kill a neighborhood. let's talk about killing a neighborhood. Carol Cleaver: Yeah. Rick Outzen: Did that how did that stick with you? Carol Cleaver: It certainly hurt my heart a little bit when he said that. I was reminded of having to teach through COVID and I proudly taught at Fairy Pass Middle School and what happened during those years is that the entire community around all of Davis Road and Yancey, they would come to Fairy Pass Middle School every day and get breakfast and lunch prepared by our cafeteria staff even in the middle of this pandemic. I was so proud. To be a part of something that was clearly so fundamental to the community. When there's a tragedy, when there's something like a pandemic, people always turn to their neighborhood schools first. And so I feel like the teachers that are at these schools, the county commissioners certainly, they are right to be protective of that. I don't want to fall into the trap though of nitpicking. Every little decision that the committee makes. I certainly serve on a committee with a lot of people that have more experience than I do. I don't wanna get into the trap of of nitpicking every decision without acknowledging why we're here in the first place, Rick. Well that Rick Outzen: That's where you you already lead into my next question is is why you know what has caused this financial crisis? Why why are we losing students? Carol Cleaver: Well, I thought that you know, going back to COVID, we had an opportunity there. We saw that neighborhood schools were what was really important to a community and what holds a community together. And unfortunately, the state of Florida decided to ignore that. To dis they decided to ignore all the hard work that the public school teachers and our cafeteria staff and our custodial staff, our bus drivers put in during that time. And they have continued with their budget to starve our school districts year after year after year, it's becoming even more and more dramatic. You made reference earlier in the interview about how many students were losing a school choice. I think a lot of people don't realize that when families select to take a voucher, that money comes directly out of our public school budget. And so that is robbing our public school students. In order to pay tuition for private schools that probably cost more than $8,000 or $9,000 a year anyway. It's not really about school choice if the school is the one that is able to choose the children that come through the door. Myself as a public school teacher, I'm prepared to teach anyone that that comes through my door. I've been trained to do that. I've got the the training and the qualifications to do that. and I'm audited, you know, the the state checks up on me. These schools that are receiving vouchers don't have any of those same accountability measures. And by not ensuring accountability and by continuing to favor budgets and legislation that is allowed to just take money carte blanche from our public schools, it really to me is our state legislature and our our governor that is killing our neighborhood schools. Rick Outzen: Yeah, you look at it's at the attendance and the the enrollment, you know, A. K. Suter's one who's seen a a tremendous drop in students and it is at one time it was in the top three or four elementary schools in grades in the school district. They you know, it was a small school, it was on the chopping block because they had small attendance. Malcolm Thomas, superintendent of schools at time. didn't want Patty Hightower to run against him for superintendent, so he agreed to build her a new AK suitor, which he opened up to the whole school district to go. But now that we have vouchers and it's a a wonderful school, like all of our elementary schools are, and and now they're seeing an erosion of their enrollment. And it's it's it really is a a bigger picture and you're right. we're we're patching You know, putting a finger in a dam that that is is spiraling out of control. the what's ne I mean, so the the next SAZAC committee, y'all didn't get through the entire agenda. We ended up spending most of it with them kind of responding to me and what I've written, but also trying to go through all the terms, which can be confusing. And I'll have an article on the blog about that later. But y y there was on the agenda to talk about Lake and Park. I guess that's what Will happen in the next meeting. Carol Cleaver: Yes, he said that we're going to start the next meeting by starting to look at Lincoln Park and those study areas within the actual school zone itself. I have been very impressed so far with the technology that they have shared with our committee. So we're using very advanced GIS technology. And they have drilled it down not just to individual school zones but individual study areas within those zones. So I do think that everybody that is on this committee is really trying to take it seriously and examine every aspect, every possible aspect of what what would be best for the kids, not just in this school zone, but on this actual street. Yeah. And so that that part has impressed me. I've I've always said, you know, we're all in the room for the same reason and we're there because we love these kids, right? Rick Outzen: And I think that I think that showed last night, Carol. Carol, thank you so much for coming on. Absolutely. always enjoy it. Thank you. pay attention to this, the Zayzai Committee. We will continue to go to the meetings and report on them. Our public our public schools are our public schools. We'll take a break. I'm Rick Alson. I'll be right back.