Tommy Hazouri's Charter Presentation on School Board

[Metro Jacksonville]

Tommy Hazouri's Charter Presentation on School Board



In a recent speech, School Board President and former Mayor Tommy Hazouri came out swinging against the idea of more school board districts or any talk of making School Board Members who are appointed by the Mayor's office instead of elected.

Along the way, he appears to have pioneered the first modern usage of the word "sensical" and significantly wonders aloud why everyone gets money from the JEA except the School Board.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-oct-tommy-hazouris-charter-presentation-on-school-board

[stjr]

I think the election of school board members by district brings the same problems as the City Council.  It gets too parochial and invites political grandstanding.  Too many times the school board has been distracted by politically charged issues such as race, sex education, course and book censorship, school boundaries, the name on Forest High School, religion in the schools, grand-standing turf wars with superintendents, etc.  What Tommy overlooks is, that just because we may have a somewhat functional school board at the moment, one election could quickly take it back to the old ways.  Only a Charter update would assure the preservation of a system that stays focused on the real needs of schools.

During these "debates", attention is diverted from student achievement, adequate school funding, supporting teachers, expanding and enriching curriculums, improving learning environments, studying innovative programs that might increase graduation and college acceptance rates, increasing community support for public education, decreasing dropout rates, etc.

The real question is how do we get the most qualified and passionate individuals to focus on these truly important topics relating to a quality education and how do we maintain accountability of both the oversight board and the hired help?  Perhaps, the School Board should be modeled after the structure of our "Authorities".  Or, maybe all members, if elected, should be county wide races, not by district.  We could follow the model on this of the City Council at large, where the at-large reps have to live in varying districts even though they are elected at-large.

There may be some cost and administrative efficiencies aligning the schools more closely with the City.  The trick would be to find, again, the right model that harvests the pluses without being entrapped in the minuses.  Again, a hybrid like the authorities may be a starting point for this idea.

As to smaller "school districts", I suspect the greater issue isn't local "control" per se, it's the desire to return to neighborhood schools where area residents felt "ownership" and pride in their nearest school and were multiple generations of kids went to those schools making the schools "part of the family".  This might go a long way toward rebuilding support for public education.  Obviously, people prefer neighborhood schools so their kids don't spend 10, 20, or 30+ miles and/or several hours a day getting to school and back when that time could be better spent on studies and/or time with family and/or extracurricular activities or work.  If we had neighborhood schools, the demand for smaller districts would most likely evaporate.

I realize the courts have had a role in this but someone needs to take a fresh look at the present realities and determine, if we have made enough progress in equal education, if there is an opportunity to tweak the current model.  Duval is a big county geographically and, as such, people of all colors have been over-penalized by the long range cross town busing.  Perhaps, busing within fairly drawn mini-districts would be an acceptable compromise.  Likewise with the magnet programs.  I understand the needs and advantages of these and support continuing them but, again, how should they be dispersed to make them easier to access.