Say YES to Reduce Politics in Education!

Voters can reduce political influences in our public school system by voting YES on November 6th for Escambia County Schools to move to an appointed superintendent model.  In 1967 this very same question failed county-wide by the margin of ONE (1) vote.  Imagine where we might be 51 years later if that vote had passed?

People are sick and tired of politics.  Every day, in the news, infused in our life…politics.

On TV, online, on the radio—everywhere.  

It’s almost a dirty word because we’re all so sick of it.

Unfortunately, we’ll never be able to take politics out of every aspect of our lives—most people understand this reality.

But “politics” has no place in educating our children!

And there’s ONE thing each of us can do on November 6^th to minimize the political nature of our education system locally.

Vote YES for an appointed superintendent at the end of your ballot. 

Vote YES to empower your Elected Board of Education to engage a professional committee to find the very best educational specialist--from a nationwide search--to administer Escambia’s schools.

Vote YES to make our top schools administrator a professional position--NOT a political one!

Because Escambia’s children deserve a professional, non-political administrator focused on student achievement –NOT a politician driven by political pressure, donor whims, fear of negative media, and the ever-present election-cycle calendar.

Say YES to allow your school board to set the performance standards, enforce policy, and supervise the administrator.

  

Leave the politics to our elected board of education, where it should rest.  Make your voice be heard through their elections.

After all, every two years county voters have a crack at multiple members of the elected board of education.

Under our current, antiquated system,  the elected board and the elected superintendent can shrug their respective shoulders, and play the blame game back and forth ad nauseum… "It’s because of Tallahassee and their lack of funding…” or “We need more [fill in blank] …”

It becomes cyclical Kabuki theater that allows all concerned to avoid responsibility—and a politically
 comfortable status quo is maintained in perpetuity to the detriment of our students while the same politicians are elected over and over and over and nothing changes.

We must do better though--our students' collective futures demand no less!

Under the modern, well-accepted appointed superintendent model--the board can immediately remove the superintendent  if performance targets are not met or if board policy is not dutifully and faithfully implemented...no more waiting 4 long years until the next election.  No more politics of the election calendar stifling and stymieing decision making.

Skeptics of this change need only ask themselves these simple questions:

If you found yourself in the terribly unfortunate circumstance of being diagnosed with a life-altering medical condition, and you could seek out the best treatment available in the world, would you self-limit your treatment options to only the doctors and only the hospitals located in Escambia County Florida? 

If you were on the board of directors of a large corporation and you needed a new CEO to improve poor performance—or else your company would face insolvency--would you self- limit your CEO search ONLY to current company employees and ONLY in the geographical area in which your company was incorporated?

If you were a trustee of a top Division I College, and a decision was made to hire the best coach for your school's struggling football team from “out of the state”—would you really think that idea was bad?

The answer to each question above is NO—and you know it. 

So, let’s change Escambia’s educational paradigm locally and appoint the BEST professional school administrator like 48 of 50 U.S. states already do in 2018.

Let’s elect solid, passionate school board members and mandate that they hire the BEST administrator to run the schools like more than 99% of our nation’s 15,000 school systems already do in 2018.

Under an appointed model:

-Qualified local applicants for the Superintendent position are allowed and encouraged.

-Voters are given MAXIMUM power over the performance of the system by demanding their school board member(s) perform—otherwise they may be voted-out of office via two-year staggered elections.

-Your voice and your vote are NOT lost—they are intensified and magnified.

On November 6^th ---we can improve Escambia’s public-school governance model.

But it depends on you.

Please put students, parents, and teachers ahead of politics.

Please vote YES for Escambia Schools at the end of your ballot on November 6th.