Ron Littlepage's annual all is well in our schools message

I sent this to him but I have yet to hear back. -cpg

Ron I was wondering when you were going to have your annual, we have the right leader and school board to take us into the future column. I hope the recent rankings by the state saying we were 50th out of 67 and we had 8 out of the bottom 25 high schools (out of 404) hadn't dissuaded you.

In all seriousness I don’t think it is fair to compare Duval to St. Johns or Cay or other neighboring districts (1 and 12). Quite frankly our district is both a lot bigger and a lot poorer.

But what about comparing our district to Miami Dade? They have three times as many kids as us and have an even higher percentage of students receiving fee and reduced lunch. In last weeks rankings of districts they were 37th and we were 50th! We have eight high schools in the bottom 25 and they have five while having nearly three times as many high schools. Furthermore we may have two in the top twelve but they have four in the top nine.

I am sure Miami Dade has issues, but many of them are the same as ours and they are doing a much better job handling them.

You could regurgitate the superintendents spin, Our superintendent as usual put a positive spin on it and talked about two of our schools being in the top 12, rigor and our college ready curriculum. I don't think it holds up if history is an indication you might.

The two high schools in the top 12 are Paxon and Stanton, magnet schools for our top kids but remember when Stanton and Paxon were number five and twelve in the nation? Now they are that way in just the state.

There is also a difference between rigorous and advanced classes. Many teachers feel rigor has been destroyed by grade recovery and the districts gentlemen’s C policy, where we pass kids along whether they have the skills they need or not. 34% of our kids don't get to HS without being able to read on grade level by accident.

Finally you might want to ask Florida State College at Jacksonville where 70% of our graduates have to take remedial classes how well our college prep curriculum is doing.

In case you were wondering the state average is 55%, so we're not to far off maybe you could sell that.

I know you care about the river but how about caring about the cities kids too.

Well I was just wondering

Chris Guerrieri