John O'Connor is the Miami-based education reporter for StateImpact Florida. John previously covered politics, the budget and taxes for The (Columbia, S.C) State. He is a graduate of Allegheny College and the University of Maryland.
Gov. Rick Scott listens at a Miami business roundtable meeting in August. Scott has been circulating a Texas plan designed to quantify college and faculty performance.
Gov. Rick Scott added higher education salaries to a website he set up to detail contracts, employee pay and other state spending.
Check out the payroll for Florida’s 11 public universities here.
The data was already posted online, which has university professionals wondering if Scott is trying to turn public opinion against academia. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune quotes Tom Auxter, president of the 5,000-member union representing university employees:
“This is hanging people out to roast,” said Tom Auxter, president of the 5,000-member union that represents university faculty. “The governor is just trying to target faculty and make them uncomfortable.”
The White House notes that Orange County schools would receive $169.6 million to repair and modernize schools and another $13.2 million to pay for deferred maintenance.
The bill would send a total of $3 billion to Florida, supporting an estimated 16,600 jobs.
The Academy of Arts and Minds in Coconut Grove used to be a shopping mall. But no one was buying space, so the owner of the property founded a charter school and now rents his property to his school. The campus still looks like a shopping mall. There are wrap-around balconies on every floor and the classroom have floor-to-ceiling windows very much like a store front.
Sarah Gonzalez‘ story Wednesday about the business deals of a Miami-area charter school drew strong reader responses.
Intelligentmom came to the school’s defense, arguing students were left without books due to surprising enrollment growth. Academy of Arts and Minds students are prospering:
The Academy of Arts & Minds is an A+ school with a 98 percent graduation rate. Our grads have been accepted to some of the best colleges and universities in the nation. The school’s strong track record of academic success is why we chose to enroll our children at this school and it’s why we stay.
But SickOfLies believes school officials are living off past accomplishments:
The school was a mess until a real principal was hired in 2009 and turned the school around completely. It was because of him that the school earned it’s first-ever “A.” The principal has since left, but the school is still riding on the success of that one “A.” A lot of poor kids were disappointed this year to find that most of the teachers had left
In one case, district officials argued they already offered the online courses proposed by a virtual charter school.
In another, they rejected a plan from a for-profit company to replicate its ‘A’-rated South Florida charter in Seminole County. It’s a direct challenge to a new state law that makes it easier for high-rated charter school to expand.
Schaffner said Seminole County has had to close charter schools in the past and knows how to identify red flags in an application.
“We just felt like the ones that applied did not live up to the expectations of Seminole County,” Schaffner said. “We have to be sure that we improve student learning.”
Florida schools say they are not tracking whether the children of undocumented workers are enrolling.
Our colleagues at WUSF radio have looked into whether Alabama’s anti-illegal immigration laws mean migrant workers are moving to Florida and sending their children to schools:
Are students from Alabama ending up in Florida because of that state’s tough new immigration law? A news service reported that Florida’s educators were trying to answer that question.
But school officials say they’re not keeping count.
There are some anecdotal stories about migrant families from Alabama arriving in Florida’s tomato growing country several weeks early. Many say they’re fleeing the state’s more restrictive immigration law.
More than one-third of Florida school districts did not have a charter school during the 2010-2011 school year. View an interactive map.
In Clay County, high school students can study aerospace, information or agricultural technology at one of twelve specialized academies.
But students in this suburban Jacksonville district can’t attend a charter school. There are none.
More than one-third of Florida’s 67 counties did not have a charter school during the 2010-2011 school year, according to a StateImpact Florida analysis of state data. Most of those counties are clustered between Pensacola and Jacksonville.
While the number of counties seems large, they represent just 5 percent of total state public school enrollment.
This map shows Florida school districts which did not have a charter school during the 2010-2011 schools year. More than one-third of Florida counties do not have a charter school, but those counties make up only 5 percent of statewide public school enrollment. Click on a district for more information about charter school enrollment. Continue reading →
Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, has introduced a bill allowing teachers to donate sick leave to colleagues.
If a cancer-stricken colleague has burned all of his or her sick leave, would you want to donate yours to help them out?
A Florida lawmakers has introduced a bill allowing just that.
Stuart Republican Rep. Gayle Harrell told TCPalm.com that the bill was inspired by Karen Gangi, a Martin County elementary teacher who used all her time off helping her husband recover from a brain injury in North Carolina.
Currently the law only allows teachers who are related and work in the same district to directly donate leave time. Teachers can donate time to “leave banks” but can’t specify which teachers get to use the time.
Harrell’s bill would not require districts to set up the leave program.
What do you think of the idea? Do you know colleagues who could benefit? Should lawmakers approve the bill?
Gov. Rick Scott listens at a Miami business roundtable meeting in August. Scott wants state universities to encourage students into science and math degrees.
Colleges will need to produce more science and technology graduates, according to Gov. Rick Scott’s economic agenda released Wednesday.
Less than 20 percent of Florida university system graduates earn degrees in science, technology or math — also known as STEM — Scott wrote in a release. That rate of STEM graduates will not fill the estimated 120,000 high-tech jobs Florida will create by 2018.
Scott does not set a goal for state universities, but urges universities to “drive [their] graduates toward high employment and high earning careers.”
“In order to achieve these goals, it is critical that Florida establish a goal for STEM graduates over the next five and ten years,” Scott writes. “High expectations coupled with increased accountability will ensure that our universities are a driving force for economic growth.”
Hillsborough school district chef Ben Guggenmos shows Broward Elementary students how to build a dessert fruit pizza.
Part of the reason I moved to StateImpact Florida from a newspaper was the chance to learn some skills and try new things.
It turns out that producing radio news stories is much harder and a lot more work than I expected. You don’t show up sounding like NPR on your first day no matter how easy it sounds on the radio.
Between the equipment, techniques, editing and mixing, I’ve learned first-hand there are a lot of ways to ruin a story.
So I jumped when I saw a Hillsborough County schools press release about a new nutrition program. It’s fun and fluffy and not the world’s most important education story.
But I knew it would be a great chance to gather ambient sound, interview “characters” for the story and practice, practice practice for more important stories down the road.
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