I am angry. My blood boils every time one of these business
types runs for the school board thinking they can run education like a business
and turn things around, undaunted by their lack of experience and institutional
knowledge. I am even angrier that they use flowery phrases as a substitution
for real ideas and solutions.
From Mr. Shine’s website:
Safety and Security
My first priority is to ensure our children are safe, not
only while at school, but coming and going. Shine supports, and will work to
maintain, the current level of public safety officers in our schools. I support
the increased use of technology and monitoring to prevent outside threats from
harming our students. I believe we must always be vigilant.
How different from all his opponents who couldn’t care
less about safety who are calling for cuts to safety officers or none of
them. Is he calling for cameras? I
can’t tell but an example of an idea is, we must have more social workers and
mental health counselors working with our troubled children to prevent them
from striking out in the first place and instead of spending 600 grand on a
study (something the QEA grant does) we’re going to put people in place to help
them.
Student Readiness
I want to see students
achieve the best grades and highest graduation rates they can. What’s more, I
support more emphasis on readiness for vocational training and college. Studies
show that 9 out of 10 jobs in the new economy will require education beyond a
high school degree.
Funny because I think his
opponents only want to see them meet 75% of what they can. Now it’s great how
he supports readiness for vocational training in college but what he doesn’t
address is that most of the kids taking advanced and AP classes are also the
ones in our academies too. In effect we are double serving those children while
the child who might not be college ready or want to be college ready goes
unserved. An idea would be, I would like to see every child by the time they
are in high school pick a career academy they are interested in and I am
dedicated to finding the transportation money to make sure they can attend.
Support Teachers
More than half of Duval
County Public School teachers leave their jobs in the first five years of
employment. Studies suggest this is largely due to job satisfaction. This is an
important concern, as we know teacher effectiveness increases the longer they
are working in the system. I support new methods to improve teacher
satisfaction, recruitment and retention. Teachers are the engine that runs our
education machine. We need to find the most effective teachers we can, and do
our best to keep them in Duval County schools for the long term.
He’s right on the facts, sounds
great too except after reading you notice he doesn’t have an inkling of an idea
of what to do. How about creating an ombudsman position that teachers can take
their complains to. How about ending the practice of overriding teacher’s book
selections. How about pledging monthly town halls throughout his term with
teachers to listen to their complains and concerns? How about saying teachers with satisfactory evaluations can no
longer be non-reappointed. Come on Scott what’s a brother got to do to get an
idea????
Seriously look at his page and then demand he do better. http://scottshine.com/?page_id=94
So I am angry that this guy is in
his den right now thinking, hey I can do that job. I am angry that he lacks
ideas and I am beeping pissed off that he might become of my bosses too especially since it seems like he is just hoping his name recognition gets him there.
.
As for being uninformed, it’s true I am not a Scott Shine expert and apparently I did get it wrong about him
being paid for his government work, but his problem is I am informed about what is happening in our schools something I can't say about Mr. Shine.
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