Sammy Mack is the Miami-based education reporter for StateImpact Florida. Sammy previously was a digital editor and health care policy reporter for WLRN - Miami Herald News. She is a St. Petersburg native and a product of Florida public schools. She even took the first FCAT.
Job: Superintendent of the St. Johns County School District
Q: How well prepared do you feel for the Common Core?
A: Better than a year ago. We’re not there yet, I would say we’re probably 50% there. I am excited about it. It’s going to take a lot of training on the part of teachers and parents, but I think we’re a good ways there and I think we’ll be there in ‘14, ‘15.
After a long, humid summer, kids across the state are waking up and getting ready to go back to school this week.
One of those students, 16-year-old Keri Grigas, started her junior year at South Broward High School this morning. Listen to her bus-stop interview with us from this morning:
Keri later met up with us at the bus stop after school to tell us how the day went:
Sammy Mack / StateImpact Florida
Keri Grigas started her junior year on Monday.
For your reading pleasure, we’ve also rounded up a few more of our favorite small moments from the big day back. Feel free to share your own in the comments.
The sun had barely risen, but Gillian Pons, donning pink shoes, a golden uniform top and a blue hair ribbon to match her shoelaces, was already feeling chipper about the morning ahead.
“It’s a great day!” said the 9-year-old as she walked with her family en route to Cypress Elementary, where the first day of fourth grade awaited.
“Get loose. Get funky. Get started with your knees!” chanted Will Phillips, the leader of the team, whose members will focus on mentoring students in third-grade and above to approve attendance, academics and behavior at the D-rated, low-income school.
“If I can get the to dance with us, I can hopefully get them to improve their grades as well,” Phillips said. “It takes the whole school to keep students excited.”
In the pre-kindergarten classroom at Sanderlin Elementary School in St. Petersburg, the teacher was as nervous as the students.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself to do things perfectly,” said Ashley Cooley, 23, of her first-full-time teaching job. “Since I woke up this morning, nervous, I’ve been drinking lots of water and taking nice slow breaths.”
Florida’s system of giving schools grades from A-to-F has been in the spotlight this summer.
First, state officials made last-minute changes to the A-to-F formula, preventing more than 150 schools from dropping to F grades.
Sammy Mack / StateImpact Florida
What's in a school grade? We asked parents.
Then, Florida’s education commissioner Tony Bennett resigned over reports that he manipulated school grades in Indiana when he was in charge of schools there.
Florida pioneered the A thru F school grade system in 1999. But now, even supporters are saying it’s time to revisit the formula.
With school about to start back up, we reached out to parents through the Public Insight Network and asked: What does a school’s grade even mean to you?
Lauren Case already knows what she’s going to say on the first day of school when her students ask what she did over summer break:
“I saw a rocket launch; it was awesome. You want to go too? Maybe you should become an engineer,” says Case, a 10th grade science teacher at South Fork High School in Stuart, Fla.
Lockheed Martin-NSTA Teacher Fellows Mary Maddox and Steve Kirsche watch the MUOS-2 satellite launch.
The fellowship is designed to take science teachers who have only been in the classroom for a couple of years and expose them to real-world applications of STEM—science, technology, engineering and math—so that, hopefully, they can bring the enthusiasm back to their students.
It’s summertime and Angela Maxey, principal of Sallye B. Mathis Elementary School, is observing a classroom of 9- and 10-year-olds draw and identify different kinds of triangles.
Karelia Arauz
Campers in the summer program at Sallye B. Mathis Elementary School learn Common Core lessons.
“Remember this is fourth grade—they’ve just finished third grade, but they’re learning fourth grade curriculum,” says Maxey. “It’s all Common Core.”
This is not your traditional summer school. The kids in this classroom are part of Duval County Public Schools’ Superintendent’s Summer Academy. They’ll be voluntarily spending their summer here, at Sallye B., learning math and science lessons in the classroom and on field trips—with the explicit goal of preventing summer learning losses.
In the three months that they’re out of school, most kids lose some of what they learned in the school year. On average, students start school in the fall about a month behind where they left off in the spring. Research shows that kids from low-income, minority schools lose disproportionately more over the summer. Those losses build up and, down the road, can keep a kid from graduating. Continue Reading →
Principal Angela Maxey is ready for the Common Core at Sallye B. Mathis Elementary School in Duval County.
Florida schools have just one more academic year to phase in a new set of education standards under the Common Core—and Principal Angela Maxey is ready.
“I’m truly a proponent for standards-based Common Core education. I’m passionate,” says Maxey, who works at Sallye B. Mathis Elementary School in Duval County.
Her school is a math, science and pre-engineering (STEM curriculum) magnet school where 90 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch. For Maxey, the Common Core is about more than new benchmarks.
“Education, to me, levels the playing field,” says Maxey.
Maxey spoke with StateImpact Florida for part of our series on how educators feel about the Common Core. Here’s what she had to say: Continue Reading →
Nikolai Vitti has been superintendent of Duval County Public Schools since November 2012.
Vitti arrived in North Florida last November, leaving behind a job as chief academic officer for Miami-Dade County Public Schools.
On the surface, Miami-Dade and Duval represent two very different kinds of Florida school districts. There are nearly 350,000 public school students in Miami-Dade—close to two thirds of them are Hispanic, nearly a quarter are black. The Duval school system has about 125,000 students, 44% of whom are black and 39% of whom are white.
Vitti sat down with StateImpact Florida to talk about the transition from South Florida to North Florida—and what he learned during his first school year on the job.
Editor’s note: This post was written by WLRN reporter Karelia Arauz.
The school year has ended and the summer job hunt for many teenagers is on, but with unemployment rates at about 16 percent for people ages 16-24 how can you make your resume stand out?
imagerymajestic / freedigitalphotos.net
Don't freak out. Finding a summer job is tough in this market, but it's not hopeless.
The job market might be tough, but it’s not hopeless.
We spoke with five employment experts who have advice for students in search of summer jobs.
Highlight classroom experience, especially STEM skills
“The problem is that with many people being out of work, a lot of experienced workers—people with degrees—are working in the jobs that the youth might have qualified for,” says Jacinta Straus, a youth coordinator with the Workforce Florida system.
It’s finals week at Park Vista Community High School and a small group of students buzzes over an assembly line of used Dell computers that lie cracked open with all their electronic guts exposed.
Sammy Mack / StateImpact
Students at Park Vista Community High School refurbish computers for donation.
“Right now it’s kind of messy,” says Park Vista junior Jonathan Stabio. “But essentially what we do is take a computer out of the pile that has all the components, we open it up, make sure it has everything necessary to make it run… and get them ready to be shipped off.”
Many of the donated computers that Stabio refurbishes in class will be given to families who don’t have computers at home. It’s part of a Palm Beach County program aimed at closing the digital divide.
The state already requires high schoolers to take at least one online course. By fall 2015 half of all classroom instruction will need to be digital, and students will take the standardized test that replaces the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test on a computer.
Kids like Stabio—kids fluent in technology, with access to the Internet at home and school—are well positioned to make the transition to a more digital learning environment.
But many students don’t have that advantage. By one estimate from a survey of school administrators and technology specialists, a third of Florida students don’t have a computer at home. And even if they did, it wouldn’t guarantee they would land on the right side of the digital divide. Continue Reading →
About StateImpact
StateImpact seeks to inform and engage local communities with broadcast and online news focused on how state government decisions affect your lives. Learn More »
