Escambia County School Board Cutting Property Taxes for 2011-2012

At Tomorrow’s special meeting of the School Board of Escambia County, the agenda will include setting proposed millage rates for the 2011-2012 budget year for Escambia County property owners.

For the typical property owner in Escambia County, the School Board Millage rate is responsible for the largest dollar amount on the overall tax bill.  The majority of the millage calculation formula is dictated to us from Tallahassee—so in most instances we are constrained in what rates we can, can’t, should, or must levy.

The good news for 2011-2012 is that this year our millage rates are going down.

Everything else locally is going up, gas, groceries, electricity, water—but your local school board tax rate is being CUT this year.

It may not be a huge cut, but it is a decrease.

Last year’s total school board levy                            7.860

This year’s total school board levy                            7.821

This special meeting begins at 5:00 PM Thursday, July 21^st at the Hall Center in room 160.

Escambia Student Drug Testing Plan: A Student's Perspective...and My Response

I received the below email from an Escambia District student regarding our drug testing plan.  my response follows below...

>>> "XXXXXXXXXXX" 07/15/11 2:47 PM >>>


Mr. Bergosh


I have been reading up on the new Drug Test Procedure scheduled to go into effect this 2011-2012 school year. Regarding the qualifications and rules of the test, I would like to say that from a personal perspective and that of a current students. This policy is aimed at the group of Students that are least likely to participate in drug consumption while the students more likely to be active in drugs are the ones riding buses to school, eating free lunch, and not involved in after school activities. If this policy is meant to be a way of making schools safer...Broaden the crack-down. Aim not only at the kids who drive cars and are in Beta club....aim at the students that arrive on campus in a bus packed full of people and the students that do not care for or participate in after school activities. Ultimately I am against this new Policy. If a student is handling his own at school and passing classes, and staying out of trouble, then why should what he/she does after school dictate if they can be on a team or drive to school. Also, to ensure the most efficient results of a drug test, ALL Escambia county employees should be drug tested randomly, as so the children are not contaminated to such hideous acts of morality.


Sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXX Grade Student

XXXXXXXXXXX  XXXXXXX School


my response...

XXXXXXXXXXX,


Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding your opinion about the drug testing policy. Even though you do not agree with the policy, the way in which you present your opposing view is commendable.

From a personal perspective-I have three kids in the schools and my oldest son and my daughter have both been exposed to illegal drugs at their respective middle and high schools.

Drugs are out there, XXXXXX. Peer pressure is powerful, and what we are doing by the random testing is providing students an additional reason to say no to drugs, an additional buffer against peer pressure.

Our policy did not evolve in a vacuume; For the 2009 school year, incidences of student expulsions for drug offenses rose 17% over 2008. This alarming increase prompted the school board to develop a comprehensive drug plan and to put it in place. The 2010-2011 school year, with implementation of most of the portions of our plan having occurred, has seen a dramatic decrease in drugs on campus. The drug testing is a follow on addition to the existing policy.

I agree with you in that I wish we could cast a wider net and test all students--but unfortunately we cannot do this because we are a public school. Private schools such as Catholic High School have the legal ability to test all of their students, and they do. But public schools have a different set of rules and regulations that we must follow, and we cannot legally test all students.

And by the way, students who participate in extracurricular activities and sports do sometimes get into trouble with drugs--two examples I'll give you XXXXXXXXXXXXXX school. last year several students on the XXXXXXXXXX team on a trip out of state in Kentucky were caught with marijuana. a few seasons back, several players from the XXXXXXXXX team, on a trip in Louisiana, were suspected of using marijuana.

It happens at all schools, not just XXXXXXXXX, and It's not just those who do not participate in sports. Sometimes, often times, it is those who we least expect, those who are active participants in extracurricular activities.

You sound as though you have your priorities in order and I do not think this testing will impact you. I hope you have an excellent and productive year.

But please understand that as district leaders we must do everything we can to keep our campuses as safe and drug free as we can and having a comprehensive approach like the one we are implementing is the most effective way to do this.

Sincerely,
Jeff Bergosh

Jeff Bergosh
Escambia County School Board, Dist. 1
850-469-6147
http://www.jeffbergoshblog.blogspot.com/
jbergosh@escambia.k12.fl.us

Escambia County School Board Proposed Revised District Boundary Map and Statistics

(Dark Blue Lines indicate existing district boundaries, color shaded areas indicate proposed boundaries, and red stars indicate the current residences of School Board, BOCC, and ECUA representatives)

After an initial School Board/BOCC joint meeting on the subject of redistricting in May and now a subsequent meeting yesterday—a proposed revised district map has emerged.

From the beginning, the unanimous consensus among and between members of the BOCC and School Board has been that our respective districts should be identical.

As a result of meetings with staff from the Supervisor of Elections Office and our counterparts on the county commission, school board members from all five districts may now have districts that mirror the BOCC.

The map above and corresponding data reflects the product of yesterday's excrutiating, tedious, deliberative, and meticulous 3.5 hour joint session. 

My prediction is that this map will be the final draft rendition, as I clearly heard at yesterday’s open, advertised joint meeting that at least three BOCC members and three School Board members indicated support for this map, as proposed, to be the best rendition under all of the constraints that guide the redistricting process.

Once each respective body conducts public meetings and takes input from the community, the maps will be voted on by each board.  If the maps change as a result of public input and/or any other reasons, the School Board and BOCC would most likely hold another joint session to iron out any changes.  While not mandated by law, (again I'll restate) that my impression is that the majority of the BOCC and School Board members want identical districts;  The common goal, from what I've heard after attending all of these meetings, is to follow every law and rule and have identical BOCC/School Board Member districts after this mandatory redistricting process is completed.

This map will be discussed again briefly at the school board workshop this Thursday morning at 8:00 AM, Room 160 of the Hall Center.

Escambia Schools Make Impressive Letter Grade Gains

The Elementary and Middle School Grades for Escambia County Schools were released today by the Florida Department of Education.  Escambia Schools as a whole made solid gains.  Several schools improved markedly, including Montclair Elementary School—which went from an “F” to an “A” and Weis Elementary that went from a “D” to an “A” 

The chart above shows the comparison in achievement between 2010 and 2011 for Escambia

County Schools.  Schools that have this year’s grade highlighted in green have improved over last year. There is a lot of green on the chart—so much so that the PNJ is covering this fantastic achievement with a top of the page article on their online edition.  Even our most ardent detractors acknowledge this is vast improvement.  These naysayers will still find things to snipe us on, but that’s to be expected I suppose.  Apparently the doubters have not seen this chart--showing the dramatic gains our district has made from 1999 to 2011.  Negative downer people will always be among us.

I, however, choose to concentrate on the positives: 

We are moving forward as a district, we are headed in the right direction. Even though our funding this year is $50Million less than it was just a few years ago, and we are being cut more and more every year, we still continue to improve.  Despite generational poverty and other challenges unique to Escambia in the 4 county panhandle area, we in Escambia County have managed to meet class size (unlike Santa Rosa and thirty other counties in the state  that didn’t), make drastic improvements on our school letter grades, give employees raises, consolidate functions to create efficiencies for the taxpayers, and create one of the top rated high school programs in the nation.  We have also stedily improved on our FCAT scores even as the bar is being raised and in 2011 our schools are being measured on FCAT 2.0 standards with an increased writing score required to demonstrate proficiency.

Yes, we are making huge strides forward despite numerous challenges.

The students, parents, teachers, administrators, support staff, volunteers, corporate partners, and everyone associated with our school district deserves congratulations for the efforts put forth over the last year!

Interesting Look at School District Demographics

At the School Board Workshop this Thursday morning, the board will discuss the demographics of the school district as a whole. 

Once per year the district must submit an Equity Report which gives detailed analysis of the makeup of our student population by race and gender, our workforce by race and gender, and our administrators and professional employees by race and gender.

This annual report is mandated by the Florida Educational Equity Act and is the reporting tool which enables our district to demonstrate compliance to the appropriate state agencies and to the general public.

Some interesting facts from the report--Males are very much under-represented in the teacher job classifications, Hispanics (who now comprise 5% of our county population), appear to be severely under-represented in the administrative job classification--as we appear to not have one (1) hispanic in an administrative job  in the district.

I always thought it would be great to hire the BEST candidate for any given position, regardless of the race of the applicant,  and I'm told that is what we do in this district

But to not have one Hispanic person in an administrative position in our workforce stands out to me as an area of concern which may necessitate additional recruitment efforts by our district hiring teams.

The full report can be viewed here

Who Are The Schmucks?

Is it outrageous to think that an organized governing body comprised of constitutional officers could blatantly violate state law and face no consequences? How about if dozens of governing bodies throughout a state violated a law and no action was taken against them?


This just happened in Florida.

The 2010-2011 school year was the final year for the phase-in of the 2002 class size constitutional mandate. Some districts, including Escambia County, followed the law and complied with it to the letter. And full compliance in Escambia County was not fully funded by the legislature—Escambia received just shy of $1 Million from the state for the final phase of compliance, yet the cost for full compliance locally was $4 Million. This was a giant unfunded mandate.

This situation resulted in a heated discussion at the School Board workshop of one year ago, May 14th 2010. There was talk at this particular meeting of “doing our best” and “trying” to comply with the strict provisions of the final phase of the law.

But our school board put its foot down at that meeting and said total compliance with the class size law was the only option for Escambia County Schools for 2010-2011.

Now, as the dust settles on the2010-2011 school year, we learn that over 30 Florida districts failed to comply. Several districts fell blatantly short and appear to have not even tried. Reasons have been universally weak.

“The legislature didn’t fund us for it” some districts said. But all districts receive the same per-student base allocations, so that argument fails.

“Amendment 8, if passed, would have relieved us from the burdens of the final phase of the law” other districts said. But this argument is preposterous because Amendment 8 didn’t pass and everyone knew it was going nowhere.

Insert into this chaotic mix the threats of “penalties” for districts out of compliance by the legislature, followed by threats of a lawsuit by the school boards association if the state penalized any districts, followed by talk of lawsuits by others if compliance did not occur and penalties were not levied.

Confused yet?

Don’t worry, all of this occurred under the backdrop of an oil spill, a lingering recession, statewide elections, and the worst economic mess this area has seen since the great depression.

So what was the result? Opinions vary. While the legislature and the department of education came up with a nifty formula for penalizing out-of-compliance districts--this plan has been winnowed down to a point that it’s toothless. Example—for spending $3Million over what we were funded for compliance, Escambia will receive a whopping $220,000.00, meaning we SPENT a net $2.8Million to fully follow the law. Congratulations, right?!

Palm Beach County, on the other hand (the most out of compliance district in the state) did not spend the estimated $59 Million it would have had to spend to fully comply, and for that it will be penalized $4Million dollars—meaning Palm Beach County SAVED as much as $55Million dollars via their non-compliance! And apparently there will be no legal repercussions for their failure to comply.

Perplexed, I asked our attorney her opinion on this matter. “How could these various constitutional officers get away with not following state law?” I’ve not yet received her official answer, but she has said it’s not a simple question and will require further research. So I’ll answer my own question with this rhetorical question.

Are we the Schmucks for following the law, when others saved their constituents $Millions by disregarding the law and apparently getting away with it?

You decide.

Class Size Penalties--Who were the Winners, Who are the Losers?

The figures are out as of this morning--those districts that did what was necessary to comply with the class size ammendment will be rewarded with additional funds from districts that did not comply.

But the question now becomes the following--which was the right play?

A.  Spending tons of money to comply in order to receive a fraction of the spent money back as a reward for being in "compliance"?

B.  Spending as little as possible, saving millions of dollars, and paying a fraction of what was not spent in penalties for not being in "compliance"?