Three Broward County charter schools have voted to voluntarily terminate their contracts with the school board.
Today marks 20 days into the school year in Broward County.
For some students today will be the last day on their campus and with the teachers they started the year with.
Three Broward charter schools have voted to close their doors:
Touchdowns4life Charter, a middle school in Tamarac, Fla.
Eagle Charter Academy, a 6-12 grade school in Lauderdale Lakes, Fla.
SMART Charter, a middle school in Lauderdale Lakes, Fla.
According to the school district, a letter sent home to the parents of students at Eagle and SMART stated “that the closures are due to low enrollment.”
When traditional public schools are forced to close, school boards decide at the end of the school year. But charter schools can choose to close at any time. Its one of the risks parents and students take when they choose to enroll in a charter. Continue Reading →
But the program is tied to Digital Domain Media Group, a company that just filed for bankruptcy protection and shut down its primary facilities in nearby Port St. Lucie.
Debra Wilhelm, Karen Aronowitz and John Tarka with the teacher unions in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward counties say they're wearing red to support Chicago teachers on strike.
Teachers across the state are showing their support for Chicago teachers on strike — by wearing red.
Teachers get to negotiate their contracts and working conditions, and in turn they cannot strike — it’s against the Florida Constitution.
If they do, union leaders say teachers can be fired on the spot. And in the past, union leaders who organized any strikes or walk-outs have been fined and jailed.
The strike that started collective bargaining in Florida took place in 1968 — when teachers were asking for better school conditions and a minimum salary of $5,000 a year.
Florida’s 1968 strike is considered the first statewide teacher strike in the country.
Now, teachers and educators throughout the state are wearing red to support Chicago teachers. Continue Reading →
Packard said K12 always uses Florida-certified teachers, but the company’s internal review found “minor mistakes” in matching grade and course certifications to students.
Packard said the story has been wrapped in an “unbelievable amount of rumor-mongering and absurd extrapolations.
Online education firm K12 did not reveal Florida was investigating the company in their last quarterly earnings report.
Editor’s note: Trevor Aaronson is with the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.
Executives for K12, the nation’s largest for-profit online educator, discovered in May that the Florida Department of Education had launched an investigation of the company’s practices in Seminole County. The state probe was examining whether K12 employees in Florida used teachers with improper certifications, a violation of state law, and then asked employees to cover this up.
At that time, the Virginia-based online educator launched an internal investigation. But K12, a publicly traded company, did not disclose the state investigation to its investors.
Under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, publicly traded companies must disclose what is known as material information — any information that would affect a reasonable investor’s decision to buy, sell or hold a stock. Publicly traded companies notify investors of changes or outside developments, such as investigations or lawsuits, through an SEC public disclosure document known as a Form 8-K.
The county will survey parents of students who took courses through K12 to make sure the listed teacher actually taught the student. Seminole County schools conducted a similar survey earlier this year and found more than a third of parents said the teacher listed did not teach their child.
As StateImpact Florida and the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting told you earlier this week, emails and other documents show K12 employees asking teachers to sign off on student rosters that included students they did not teach.
The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow found out about the incident only after the hired student complained to the school about not being paid. ECOT, as the school is known, fired the teacher, Marilyn Hiestand, the following week. The State Board of Education is set to revoke her teaching licenses next week.
“She had in essence outsourced parts of her job to a former ECOT student and that’s clearly against our policy,” ECOT spokesperson Nick Wilson said.
In response to ECOT’s notice of her termination, Hiestand wrote, “I hired a former student to assist me. I did not realize this was a hiring offense.”
In January, the state’s program moved from the Department of Education to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
The move was the required by the Healthy Schools for Healthy Lives Act, passed by the Florida Legislature last year to consolidate the state’s school nutrition programs under one department.
StateImpact seeks to inform and engage local communities with broadcast and online news focused on how state government decisions affect your lives. Learn More »
