Students walked out of 34 Miami middle and high schools on Thursday and Friday, some chanting “Justice for Trayvon,” in a sign of solidarity with the 17-year-old black student who was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer last month in Sanford, Fla.
Protesters numbered more than 1,000 at some schools, others fewer than 100. Some teachers and principals gave their tacit approval.
The first walkout was at Carol City High School, where Trayvon Martin was a student last year. Hundreds of his old schoolmates walked out in the middle of the school day.
Students at Krop Senior High in Miami wore hooded sweatshirts to remember slain classmate Trayvon Martin.
It’s been nearly a month since self-appointed neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen in Sanford, Fla.
Martin’s death has inspired a national debate about race and justice.
But at the high school Martin attended in Miami, his death had not been announced publicly until today, when the school held a moment of silence for the slain student.
Ashley Aristide is a junior at Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High in Miami, where Martin went to school.
She’s having a hard time coping with her friend’s death.
“He’s dead and his killer isn’t even arrested, it just doesn’t make sense to me,” Aristide said. “I just really want justice to be served in this case because it’s not fair.”
But for more than three-weeks, Aristide said no one in the school’s administration was talking to students about Martin.
Gierrea Bostick, 6, was paddled on his second week of pre-school without the consent of his mom, Tenika Jones. The paddles allegedly left welts on Gierrea’s bottom and Jones has filed a notice to sue the Levy County School District.
The administrators at most schools with corporal punishment policies ask parents for permission to paddle their children. Many principals say they will not paddle a kid against the parent’s wishes.
But schools don’t always check the paperwork before they administer the punishment.
And when that happens, Florida statutes protect the principals and teachers from lawsuits.
Florida Law Protects Principals and Teachers
Robert Rush, a civil rights attorney in Gainesville, says state law does not require schools to get parental consent.
“If the school board and the principal specifically authorize corporal punishment, it can be administered lawfully against the parent’s wishes,” Rush said.
In parts of the state, mostly in the rural north, getting spanked at school, on your butt, with a wooden or fiberglass board, is just part of being a misbehaving student.
“I been getting them since about first grade,” said Lucas Mixon, now a junior at Holmes County High School in Bonifay, Fla.
“It’s just regular. They tell you to put your hands up on the desk and how many swats you’re going to get.”
Florida is using a mathematical formula to calculate how well teachers are doing their jobs. The grade it spits out will help determine how much a teacher gets paid and whether that teacher can keep his or her job.
But the formula is so complex even an advanced calculus teacher and former college math major can’t understand how it works.
CHARLES TRAINOR JR. / Miami Herald
Advanced calculus high school teacher, Orlando Sarduy, writes out the formula that will grade and help determine the pay of Florida teachers. Even for a college math major like him, the formula is too confusing to understand. He calls it a "mathematical experiment."
Coral Reef High School teacher Orlando Sarduy says just reading the formula is difficult for him.
StateImpact Florida and the Miami Herald partnered up to deconstruct the equation and try to figure out what’s going on here. We asked statisticians and policymakers how the formula works. The answer we got: No lay person, teacher or reporter can understand it. So just trust us.
“I would really challenge any sort of decision maker to look at [the formula] and explain it,” Sarduy said. “I understand just the basics, but this is really the technical nitty-gritty of what’s going on, and to me it looks the same as it would to a lay person, like ‘what’s going on here?” Continue Reading →
Former New College of Florida student, Nan Freeman was killed at age 18 while picketing for better farm worker conditions in Florida.
Students have been leading the way in the Occupy Movement—just part of a long tradition of young people leading protest movements in America.
Forty years ago this week, a freshmen at New College of Florida became the first of five martyrs of Cesar Chavez’ United Farm Workers.
Four are men. All farm workers.
One is Nan Freeman, an 18-year-old who was killed while picketing at a sugar mill in Palm Beach County.
At school, people called her “Morning Glory,” because they liked to say she made their mornings glorious.
Freeman was born premature and almost didn’t make it home from the hospital. She was always fragile, and from a very young age, dedicated to fighting injustice.
“She wasn’t a dope taker, a setter of fires, a bomb planter, or a screamer of epithets. But she believed in people, in causes, and in its purest and most ennobling sense, love of her fellow man.”
Most facilities at UCP’s Bailes campus are designed to be accessible for students with disabilities, including this playground.Charter schools are supposed to give students an alternative to their neighborhood schools.
As our investigation found earlier this month, most charter schools in Florida serve no severely-disabled students.
But during our research, we found one county where charter schools were serving LOTS of kids with disabilities: Orange County in the Orlando area.
UCP (formerly United Cerebral Palsy of Central Florida) runs several schools where the philosophy is students with and without disabilities learn more together.
How do they do it when other charter schools say they can’t afford to serve kids with severe disabilities?
You can hear more from the parents, teachers and other supporters of UCP in the audio story below.
To read the full online version of this story, click here.
Isabella, 8, was forced to leave Miami Children's Museum Charter School after her mom, Miami School board member Raquel Regalado, learned Isabella has autism. Now, Isabella is at a traditional public school in Miami with a program for kids with hearing impairments.
Earlier this month, an investigation by StateImpact Florida and the Miami Herald revealed that most Florida charter schools are not enrolling students with severe disabilities, like autism or cerebral palsy.
The findings caused Miami-Dade School Board member Raquel Regalado to share her own story of how her daughter with autism was forced to leave a Miami charter school.
“People think that parents choose not to apply to charter schools, and that’s not true,” said Regalado.
“And within the special needs community, parents know, why even apply? Because legally they have the ability to deny you access. That’s why I wanted to tell people that it happened to me.”
StateImpact seeks to inform and engage local communities with broadcast and online news focused on how state government decisions affect your lives. Learn More »
