BCC and Escambia School Board Hold Joint Meeting

Members of the Board of County Commission and the School Board held a joint meeting on Tuesday. L to R Malcolm Thomas, Grover Robinson, Patty Hightower, Steven Barry, Bill Slayton, Doug Underhill, Gerald Boone, Lee Hansen, Lumon May, Kevin Adams, Jeff Bergosh, Jack Brown

Tuesday evening from 5:00-7:30 the Escambia Board of County Commissioners and the Escambia County School Board held a joint meeting.

Multiple subjects of interest were discussed, including safe walking to school around the county, and the need for more sidewalks.

Much of the discussion focused on the new Beulah Middle School--and the fact that access to that school will be challenging for students who walk due to the lack of sidewalks in the area.  Access coming out of Allegheny Road directly across the street from Beulah Middle School was also a hot-button discussion--as the current FDOT plan calls for that entrance to be a "right-turn only"--which the residents do not want.

We also discussed the graduation rate and the school board gave a presentation delineating the progress made with on-time, four year graduation (currently at 79.5% for 4 year graduation with a standard diploma).  This is a large improvement from the 2008 school year when the on-time, 4-year graduation rate was about 60%.

I once again brought the concept of a SEED style public charter boarding school--but there was no appetite for that here locally-mainly due to the astronomical ongoing costs per student.  But with Triumph grants available-I did think that perhaps this would have been a good funding source for start-up of a school locally.  No support for this from the school board, though.

I had a discussion about the feasibility of bringing a Law School and a Medical School to Pensacola, so that instead of exporting our students and their spending to places like Tallahassee and Mobile--we might keep them (and their expenditures for tuition, housing, food, etc.) here in the greater Pensacola area.  Folks seemed receptive, but not overly so..

My final discussion point was on establishing an Escambia Youth Commission like ones in Fulton County, GA, Seattle Washington, and San Diego California.  Quite surprisingly--this idea was met with much support--even from the members of the school board.  I look forward to working with members of the staff, and the school district, with establishing this new group over the next few months.

The video of the entire meeting can be found here.

Take Aways from the Joint Meeting between BCC and ECSD

The Escambia County Commission and the Escambia County School Board held their first joint-meeting since 2010 on Tuesday.  The meeting was productive and generated some good discussion on multiple subjects of mutual interest.  The meeting was covered by the PNJ and also by WEAR.

My takeaways:

1.  These meetings need to occur more frequently--when I am chairman next year I will suggest we do these joint meetings annually.

2.  Discussions of combating pockets of poverty are more productive when all the stakeholders are aligning their efforts mutually--and numerous good ideas about collaboration were discussed at this meeting directed at addressing this problem.

3.  The library card for all Escambia Students was/is a solid idea

4.  The utilization of ECAT by students to attend choice school programs is solid.

5.  The discussions about providing safe walking routes to school were good, I will work hard to help facilitate this because I know we are a "car-rider" county because in many instances there are not safe/walkable routes to school.

6.  The discussions about HIV/AIDs infections in Escambia County and how to better align our mutual efforts in combating this epidemic were good--not sure what the outcome or change in this arena will be.  Conversations about what the high-risk behaviors are that lead to these infections are difficult and rife with concerns about "political correctness."

7.  Kevin Adams had a very interesting concept about forming a safe-neighborhood task force that I strongly support.

8.  My discussion of a SEED-style boarding school ginned up lots of conversation---mostly positive.  Bill Slayton is opposed and said we need to keep working on Pre-K for 3,000 students per year and not try to do "too many things at once."  Doug Underhill said in no way would he ever support this concept because he stated that "no matter what, the parent child bond should never be broken!--even if the parent is a crackhead"  I disagreed with both Slayton and Underhill.  Slayton obviously feels we can only do one thing at a time and he obviously agrees with many that pre-k is the panacea that will fix everything academically. It is not.  The Vanderbilt Peabody and 2012 HHS Head-start Impact studies show otherwise; when we look at academic achievement sustainment at grades one and two and we measure the study group against the control group-- the Tennessee pre-k students show no greater achievement than do the control group of students who did not attend pre-school....Bill Slayton obviously has not read these studies....  I stated at the meeting that I could not disagree more with Underhill's assessment-that I believe that in some circumstances leaving a child in dysfunctional home environment is DANGEROUS.  Children are routinely separated from bad parents by the courts, when such children are abandoned, abused, and neglected.  It's called the termination of parental rights and it saves kids.  Guess Doug doesn't believe in that either.  I couldn't disagree with him more.

Watch the entire video here