Q&A Of The Day – Evaluating South Florida’s School Boards – Part 1
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s entry: I see that Fox has published about the pushback from parents regarding Equity in SDPBC and the false, untruthful reply from School Board Chairman Frank Barbieri who said that the SDPBC’s statement was ‘intended to show the board’s dedication to improving equality’ in Florida public schools.
This is true disinformation as equality and equity are in opposition. He may be attempting to calm less informed parents who haven’t discovered the meaning and intent of equity (versus equality).
If this was not EQUITY related, then why was Keith Oswald given the new ‘critically important new assignment’ as the Chief of Equity and Wellness. Chairman Frank Barbieri is purposely misinforming the parents of SDPBC students. Equity, CRT and anti-racism exist to create new truth by removing facts and science.
This school board is out of control and doesn’t listen to parents, as was experienced during this COVID school year. The entire board (who approved this equity project) needs to be voted out.
Bottom Line: I’ll start by saying... I agree. And on that note... Yes, South Florida, when it comes to our school boards we have a problem, or more appropriately – a lot of them. My theme of 2020, every election has consequences and it’s often those closest to you which have the greatest impact on your daily life, certainly still applies. With very few South Floridians having elections left to consider this year and with everyone literally having a vested interest in our public schools, with property taxes being the primary funding source for them, the theme for the rest this year should be to take back our schools.
Heading into this year’s state session my top priority was expanded school choice for precisely the reasons you’re discussing and the legislature delivered by significantly expanding what was already the country’s largest school choice program. The apparent attempt at a veiled CRT program by the School District of Palm Beach County, uncovered by concerned citizens such as yourself and now picked up on by national news media, is just the latest in a long line of poor leadership decisions by the District. Remember the last time the District made national news, with the bungling of Holocaust denying former Spanish River High School principal William Latson? And that's not even addressing the larger question as to how someone who is so morally and informationally bankrupt could rise to the level of a principal at a prominent school in the first place. As a rule of thumb, if a local school board makes national news, we likely have problems on our hands. And on that note consider Broward’s.
Here’s a school district which engaged in the Promise diversion program, which errors on the side of keeping troubled students in schools. They then even failed to follow through the steps of the program for countless students none the least of which was Nikolas Cruz. As evidenced in the Stoneman Douglas Commission report, the District failed to accurately report disciplinary issues to the state as is required by law. Of course, that goes back a few years at this point, and remarkably in a matter of four months this year, the Broward School District had their CIO arrested for bid tampering and kickbacks, their Superintendent arrested for perjury and their top attorney for unlawful disclosure/interference of a grand jury’s proceedings pertaining to the districts aforementioned failures. How many national stories are those which have nothing to do with excellence in education? Even in Miami-Dade, which in my view is the best managed district in the Tri-County (largely because of the leadership of Superintendent Alberto Carvalho), the board pressured Carvalho to do an about face on the decision to allow students to be mask free outside for the rest of the school year and initially resisted optional masks for the next school year before parents made their voices heard and the District acquiesced. So yes, we have problems with our school boards. So, what should we do? I’ll address that in the second part of today’s Q&A.
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