The Florida Coalition of School Board Members hosted a
member’s only educational roundtable webinar yesterday with Senator Don
Gaetz. Gaetz (Senate President
2012-2014) is in his final term in the Senate, having spent nearly a decade in
this position. “I started out like you
all, first as a school board member, then I became a Superintendent of Schools,
and finally I slid all the way down to become a state Senator” quipped Gaetz at
the beginning of the call.
“This was a good session for education in general, we did
not get everything we wanted, but we did get a lot of things that are good”
Gaetz told the assembled group of school board members from around the state. “It was also a good session for your group
[FCSBM] as language was put into [HB] 7029 that allows you all to pull your
share of membership dues away from FSBA”
When asked about CAPE, he pointed out that this program that
he supported strongly, has exceeded expectations, with more than 400,000
Florida students having earned industry certifications thus far as a result of
this program.
When asked by Tina Calderone of Seminole County about the “Seminole
Solution” regarding testing reform—Sen Gaetz responded by saying the Senate was
ready to move on testing reform and legislation was submitted in the Senate to
address many areas of reform the Dr. Griffin and Seminole County had described. “There was no movement at all in the house on
this issue” Gaetz said.
I asked about how we are to ensure all students’ privacy
rights are maintained with respect to the mandate from President Obama’s
Department of Education regarding transgender students and access
to locker
rooms in particular. “We have $19Trillion
in debt, going to $21 Trillion, ISIS is on the march overseas, we have a real
problem with illegal immigration----and Obama and the DOE are now taking the
role of Bathroom Police?” Gaetz mused to preface his answer. “As a former school board member and a former Superintendent of schools, I would say to you that much of this will be
litigated and not resolved prior to the next [Presidential] administration
taking over. So if I were a school board
member right now I would tell the people that we are going to continue our
existing policies….”
When asked by Erika Donalds, a school board member from
Collier County and the current President of FCSBM, about the charter school
capital outlay differences between the House and the Senate this past session,
Sen Gaetz said that he felt that the dollars should follow the students but
that as a matter of practical reality it may not be possible to ever get all
the capital dollars to follow students that go to charter schools. “I was approached by superintendents from
around the state who told me point blank that ALL of the capital funds were
already encumbered by bankers in New York—and to provide capital dollars to
charter schools would make them go insolvent.” Gaetz said. “Come to find out, this was not entirely
true, and in the end a compromise position was taken between the House and the
Senate with respect to the charter school capital issue.”
When Shawn Frost, school board member from Indian River
County, asked Senator Gaetz about his biggest concern with respect to
educational matters going forward, he was direct in his answer. “The single most important issue going
forward is getting our testing under control as a state-- or else we will lose
it” he warned. “We have a perfect storm,
we have those that for political reasons do not ever want to measure student’s
progress, the Obama/United Nations conspiracy theorists that hate standardized
testing, combined with those in the middle who want testing but are weary of
all the problems we’ve had. If we don’t
address this we will lose our testing because this perfect storm of opponents
will take it away and then it is gone.
If I had one more session, I’d file legislation and we would get it
fixed” Gaetz concluded.
We thanked Senator Gaetz for his service and his attention
to educational matters over the last decade in the Senate, and he praised our organization
for taking a strong stand on some major educational policy issues; he thanked
us for lobbying effectively this session to get some strong educational law
passed.
This was an extremely beneficial call, and I’m thankful to
Sen. Gaetz and the FCSBM for putting this event together.
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