Five years ago the school I worked at was a C high school of some renown. Then we received 300 kids on opportunity scholarships. An opportunity scholarship can be used by a student at an intervene school to go to a school with a grade of C or higher.
Within two years my school was an F and within four we were one of the latest schools to be named to the intervene list. We have also sacrificed many of the programs that made our school worth going to in order to have more FCAT prep classes and most of our veteran teachers have left. Now hundreds of our kids are leaving for Mandarin. Anybody want to guess what Mandarin will be like in two years? How about four? Once the dominoes start following they usually continue to do so until they are all knocked over.
Some things you might not know about kids on opportunity scholarships. Research shows that they don’t do any better at the new schools they go too and if Jacksonville is any indicator the grades at the school they depart don’t improve either. Furthermore the district is obligated to pay to bus the kids to their new schools. Which is one of the reasons there is no longer any funding to bus kids to magnet schools. The whole city is paying the price for this bad policy. The answer should be to fix the failing schools not to pass their problems on to other schools
The state is setting up more and more of our schools to fail.
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Yes Chris, I will guess! Sorry, I won't guess. But I will tell you what Mandarin will become - definitively a LATRINE SCHOOL.
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