Next month would have been Saunders’ three-year anniversary as president.
While the university is showcasing her string of accomplishments, there was no way to get around a spate of missteps in recent months.
“There is no doubt the recent controversies have been significant and distracting to all members of the University community,” Saunders said in her resignation letter.
“The issues and the fiercely negative media coverage have forced me to reassess my position as the President of FAU,” Saunders wrote. “I must make choices that are the best for the University, me and my family.”
The Republican Party of Florida has released two new Web videos to defend Gov. Rick Scott’s record on education.
The first is a compilation of news stories about Scott’s statewide tour celebrating his successful push to include teacher raises for the budget year beginning July 1.
Republicans turned against former Gov. Charlie Crist shortly after he greeted President Obama in 2009 and accepted federal stimulus money. Crist is now a Democrat and contemplating a run for governor.
Charlie Crist isn’t officially a Democratic candidate for governor — yet.
Crist made it clear both K-12 and higher education would be front and center if he runs. Teachers would not forget that Gov. Rick Scott came into office cutting education, Crist said, despite Scott’s support for teacher raises this year.
From his speech:
There’s just a couple of issues I want to share and talk with you about, and it starts with education. It starts with education because education is our most important civil right. It really is.
If we don’t fight for our public school teachers, if we don’t fight for our universities…then we’ve lost our way.
Now we have a governor that came into office and one of the first things he did was cut $1.4 billion dollars from education. And then he thinks that, you know this past session, you give a bonus to teachers — I’ve got news for him: Teachers are smart and cannot be bought.
A 2009 recording shows online educator K12 had difficulty hiring properly certified teachers in Florida. A draft state investigation found no evidence the company used teachers who were not Florida-certified, but used three teachers who were not subject certified.
State law requires teachers are certified in their subject area and by the state.
So when a K12 teacher saw her name listed on company documents as teaching Florida classes she had not taught, she asked her managers about it.
During a November 2009 conference call, the managers called it a mistake they were fixing. The recording was provided by a source and none of the participants were in states which require permission to record a phone call.
Allison Cleveland, K12’s vice president of school management and services, tried to assuage concerns that teacher certifications were used without that teacher’s knowledge.
“Well I think the important thing about Florida – you are not actually teaching in Florida,” she said on the tape. “You have not had any contact with students in Florida. I mean your name being on that list was nothing but a mistake. And, it took us a couple of days to get to the bottom of that…you know, and I feel like we’ve been able to resolve it.”
Company managers held a series of phone calls with staff to explain the situation, including admitting that a teacher’s name showed up on a roster of Florida teachers by mistake.
The phone call was recorded and provided to the Florida Department of Education Office of Inspector General as part of an investigation into whether K12 used properly certified teachers in Seminole County.
Listen to the entire conversation between Allison Cleveland, vice president of school management and services Julie Frein, senior director of the K12 Educator Group, and K12 teacher Laura Creach.
A panel of journalists revisited questions raised during the WLRN Miami Herald Town Hall meeting in Fort Lauderdale last February.
The journalists quoted here are Mary Ellen Klas of the Herald/Times Tallahassee bureau and Aaron Sharockman of PolitiFact Florida and the Tampa Bay Times.
Q: Across-the-board raises for state teachers were one of Gov. Scott’s two top goals this session. He got the money, but the Legislature decided how it would be spent. Is this a victory or defeat for Gov. Rick Scott? Continue Reading →
K12 is the nation's largest online education company and serves Florida students in 43 school districts.
The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and StateImpact Florida have obtained internal emails and a recording of a company meeting that provide new insight into allegations that K12 Inc., the nation’s largest online education company, uses teachers in Florida who do not have all of the required state certifications.
Department of Education investigators did not find teachers without state certification, as a complaint filed by the Seminole County School District had claimed. But the investigators did find teachers without necessary subject certifications. The draft report attributed the problem to sloppy paperwork at Virginia-based K12, rather than intent to skirt the law.
If that’s true, then paperwork for Florida classes has been a problem at K12 since 2009, according to the internal emails and the recording of a company meeting.
K12 operates in 43 Florida school districts, including in Miami-Dade, Broward, Hillsborough, Orange and Duval counties. The company teaches everything from art to algebra to students in kindergarten through high school.
A recent study says that schools are emphasizing math which few students will use in their careers. Readers argue advanced concepts are essential because they improve logic and reasoning.
And schools were not spending enough time on more fundamental concepts in elementary and middle school which were more likely to be used by workers.
The authors argue schools need to ensure students master elementary and middle school-level concepts, and that the more advanced subjects, such as Algebra II, are less vital.
Just five percent of workers will use the math taught in the sequence of courses typically required by K-12 schools: Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-Calculus and Calculus.
“To require these courses in high school is to deny to many students the opportunity to graduate high school because they have not mastered a sequence of mathematics courses they will never need,” the authors wrote.
The study drew strong reactions from readers who feel that advanced math courses are essential to logic and reasoning:
StateImpact seeks to inform and engage local communities with broadcast and online news focused on how state government decisions affect your lives. Learn More »
