Guidelines

I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :








Friday, May 1, 2015

What Does the District's Contract With Newpoint Allow in terms of Oversight?

The Escambia County School Board entered into a contract with Newpoint Pensacola on June 21st 2011.  You can read the  30 page contract here.

While the contract is written and provides wide latitude to the charter school to operate autonomously in most respects, and while Newpoint Pensacola has its own school board and administrators that oversee the day to day operations of this charter school--- there are still many provisions in our contract with Newpoint that allow for the Escambia County School Board to provide oversight and to even to cancel the charter under some circumstances--particularly if laws are broken, or if the charter is not being followed, or if student safety is compromised.

I am not a lawyer, but I read the contracts.

I don't know which, if any or all, of these highlighted provisions on the pages linked below may have been at the Board's disposal to deal with allegations that erupted in May of 2014.

Maybe we could have used these contract provisions to address the allegations raised by a whistle-blower that contacted me on 3-25-2015?  I don't know, but it seems to me we had the power to immediately inspect the books and premises, initiate an intervention, ask questions, or perhaps even close them down via a 90 day (or immediate) notice if the allegations had been investigated in May 2014 and if the allegations were found to be true.

This appears to be a moot point now, as our ability as a board to act on these allegations (when they were made in the Spring of 2014) was foreclosed because we were not told of these issues by staff at that time.  And Newpoint came to the award meeting with Rick Scott and had a photo op.



(See additional pages by hitting "read more" below)















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