The school board showed their true color today, yellow, as they revealed one of the worse kept secrets in the city. They don’t represent the city’s children, parents, stakeholders or teachers, no they only represent the interests of one man and that is Superintendent Pratt Dannals. They basically told the city he doesn’t work for them, instead they work for him.
Now it is true there was some token resistance from Hazzouri, Wright and Burney but the rest of the members gave him a rating of highly effective. I don’t know what was more surprising that or the Jaguars releasing David Garrard at about the same time. I know which was more disappointing.
Lets look at just last twelve months of the superintendent’s term and then you decide or not if he has been highly effective. The year started with him declaring financial urgency to avoid fulfilling the contract with the teacher’s union. Within days he realized his mistake and ended up giving the union more than they had originally asked for.
He was part of the Duval Partners fiasco. You know the hand picked group of citizens chosen to run our intervene schools in the event they didn’t improve enough to be taken off the intervene list. This group first went underground and then tried to sub contract the management of the schools to another group. Since the school board said, no thanks, it has all but formally disbanded. As this was happening three more high schools, which meant six of our 14 neighborhood high schools are considered some of the worse in the state, found themselves on the intervene list.
The first four intervene schools, not surprisingly, did not improve enough and they were fated to either be closed or to be taken over by an Education Management Company. So Pratt-Dannals over the summer showed his one glimmer of leadership and traveled to Tallahassee and fought for the county to keep control of the original four intervene schools. Though why he even bothered to do so is beyond me.
This is because when the board questioned his plan, which consisted of just moving staff members around, days before the year was to begin, he in a brave move, WC Gentry’s words not mine, gave the first four and then later the three new ones away to yet another education management company at the cost of nearly two million dollars. He in effect threw up his hands and said, I don’t know what to do, but even worse he did it as the school year was beginning. This wasn’t a brave move, no it was a desperate move and since it will be weeks if not months, where kids lose valuable instruction time, to get those schools settled, it was a foolhardy one.
This is just the past year lets look at his term as a whole. Yes it is true graduation rates have gone up but that has as much to do with a change in the formula that calculates the rates as anything and during his term the drop out rate has gone up too. The problems we had when he started kids arriving to high school unprepared are as bad as ever accept now they arrive without discipline and a work ethic as well.
All this while social promotions, poor teacher morale, a one size fits all curriculum, access points for severely disabled children, the travesty that grade recovery has become, kids without discipline, students having to take remedial classes in college at an all time high and business report having a hard time finding qualified applicants are all hallmarks of the superintendents five year reign. How is this highly effective?
If he were a teacher he would be on an action plan and on his way out. I don’t care if he is affable. I don’t care that he gives a good presentation. I don’t care if community leaders like him, not that, that has translated into help for the schools. I only care that the school system has suffered under his leadership. Gentry who has already announced he isn’t going to run again said he beelines Pratt-Dannals is the man to lead us in the right direction, by right direction does he mean over the cliff because he has already steered us into a ditch. The truth is when we get a school board with some sense that decides it is time to replace him it will take us a decade to repair the wreckage he has wrought; how many years and kids lost futures do we need to give this guy.
What does a guy have to do to get an average or needs improvement? Does he have pictures of the school board with a live boy or with a dead girl?
The Superintendent showed today who has the juice in this town when it comes to education. It is him and that became evident today as the school board as a group laid down like lambs going to the slaughter accept it isn’t them who is going to face such a dreadful end, it’s the education and future of thousands and thousands of school children that will.
No comments:
Post a Comment