Property Tax cuts could be devastating for schools

By Marcos Restrepo

Florida school districts are already strapped for cash, but Republicans plan more cuts.

Gov.-elect Rick Scott said on his new website that, “In the coming days, we will also reach out to the Legislature to develop the partnership we need to enact the reduction in property taxes and the elimination of the business tax.”

The Pensacola News Journal reported:

Escambia County Superintendent of Schools Malcolm Thomas, also a Republican, said Scott’s plan to reduce state-mandated school property taxes by 19 percent would cause serious problems because school districts have little left to cut.

“If he’s expecting local school boards to deal with a 19 percent decrease in local funding, it would be devastating, unless he’s going to replace that,” Thomas said.

Instead, Thomas hopes Scott will look for ways to help better fund schools, including meeting the class-size amendment requirements affirmed in Tuesday’s vote and anticipated shortfalls caused by disappearing federal stimulus money.

One of the major budget issues school districts are facing is funding for the class size reduction amendment Florida voters approved in 2002. This year’s Amendment 8 would have replaced the class size reduction amendment, but it didn’t reach the 60 percent voter approval on election day it needed for passage.

School districts that have not complied with mandated caps on the number of students per classroom scheduled for 2010 will be penalized, but they have vowed to go to court.

State Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
He regretted that voters did not approve a measure [Amendment 8] that would have given school districts more flexibility in meeting teacher-student ratios the electorate approved several years ago.” “They’re going to have to whack their budgets even more,” Bennett said of the school districts.

Damien Filer, political director of Progress Florida, an organization that opposed Amendment 8, tells The Florida Independent, “Legislators have refused to fund class size reduction. Last year they estimated $350 million to fund class size reduction, but didn’t approve a penny and now they’ll penalize school districts.”

Filer adds that legislators lost their push to secure passage of Amendment 8, and now they have to fund class size reduction or go to court.

In the legislature, Amendment 8 was sponsored by state Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, and Rep. Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel.

In a written statement issued on Wednesday, Weatherdord said, “The result of the election has not changed the need to create flexibility for our students, parents, teachers, principals and school district leaders. It has also not changed the harsh reality taxpayers will face when paying higher taxes to achieve class-size compliance.”

Taken from the Florida Independent: http://floridaindependent.com/13172/property-tax-cuts-could-be-devastating-for-schools

The Chicago Way

Future G-Man Jim Malone when explaining how to bring down Al Capone to Eliot Ness said, You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That's* the *Chicago* way!

Public education brought a knife to a gunfight this past Tuesday in Florida and where it’s not officially in the morgue it is on life support. Friends there is no way to sugar coat it, education took a severe beating.

Deborah Gianoulis lost to St. Johns county carpetbagger Jon Thrasher and this race wasn’t even close as Thrasher won by almost 20-percentage points. Gianoulis ran on improving and helping education and Thrasher ran on, I promise not to give all the special interests that I serve the kitchen sink.

Rick “I am not a criminal just mistakes were made, and it’s funny how that one never works at the courthouse”, Scott spent 73 million of his own dollars to buy, err win the Florida Governorship. We didn’t have an election so much as we had an auction. Mr. Scott by the way didn’t think the reviled by everybody who wasn’t related to or had his or her hand out looking for money from John Thrasher (he’s not only a representative people but he’s the Florida Republican chairperson too) senate bill six went far enough.

Then there is amendment 8 which failed to pass; unfortunately this was a bit of a hollow victory as a greater percentage voted to roll back the class size amendment than voted for it originally. I have to say where I voted against amendment 8, the class size how it is being implemented has become part of the problem. Even my meager victory is actually a mind numbing, heart breaking defeat.

There is no silver lining that I can see and the glass isn’t just half empty, it’s smashed broken into a million pieces.

It’s like Jack and Jill public looking at their ballot said to themselves how can I devastate public education, how can I set it back and assure more children fall through the cracks and more teachers leave the profession and then voted accordingly.

Supporters of pubic education we did not get our message out there. We didn’t let Jack and Jill public no the urgency of the situation. Friends we brought a knife to a gunfight and were treated the Chicago way.

Fund Education Now Calls Amendment 8 A Shameful Waste of Tax Dollars

Orlando, Florida...FundEducationNow.org denounced the Florida Legislature today for squandering hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars by running the Amendment 8 campaign, placing it on the ballot and defending it in court.

According to the St. Pete Times, State Representative Will Weatherford, an Amendment 8 sponsor, stated that if Amendment 8 fails at the ballot on Tuesday, “we will possibly look at other statutory fixes.”

“There has always been a statutory solution to class size. Legislators who sit on key Education Committees have told us this repeatedly behind closed doors. Finally, someone has slipped up and the truth is out,” said Linda Kobert, partner, Fund Education Now.org.

“Representative Weatherford and the Florida Legislature have spent upwards of a half a million dollars of tax payer money on this folly. We could have hired a dozen new teachers, filled several libraries with books or restored some of the painful cuts to our kids with this money,” added Kathleen Oropeza, partner, Fund Education Now. org

“It’s unfortunate that the Legislature seemingly pursued a distracting, manipulative and expensive amendment campaign when a simple statutory fix was there all along. The people of Florida deserve better than that,” said Christine Bramuchi, partner, Fund Education Now.org

Founded in 2009, by Kathleen Oropeza, Linda Kobert and Christine Bramuchi, three Orlando parents of public school students, FundEducationNow.org is a nonpartisan, non-union group of citizen-advocates.

The group is a plaintiff in the current lawsuit against the state of Florida that alleges that the legislature has not fulfilled its “paramount duty” to provide a free, high quality, safe, efficient and uniform system of public education.

Part of a broad alliance of education advocates, FundEducationNow.org is on a mission to inspire advocacy in ordinary citizens and bring parents into a thoughtful discussion about public education reform In Florida.

Fund Education Now partners are available to speak to radio, print or television journalists about our position on Fair Districts Amendments 5 & 6 and the Florida education crisis. To schedule an interview or receive more information, contact: Kathleen Oropeza, kathleeno@clf.rr.com; 407.234.8948

Source: www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-st-petersburg/florida-amendment-8-vote-brings-last-minute-surprise

Area superintendents get it wrong on amendment 8

Three area superintendents (Duval, Clay and St. Johns) got together to ask locals to vote against amendment 8, the amendment designed to roll back the class size amendment that voters approved eight years ago and I have to say they gave pretty reasonable reasons. (http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-10-29/story/first-coast-superintendents-state-their-case-amendment-8)

The only problem is they got wrong. Instead of asking the citizens and parents of north east Florida to vote against something which is good for kids, smaller classes, they should have instead been screaming to the heavens that the legislature fund education in the fashion that the original amendment intended for them to do.

The legislature shouldn’t be putting schools in the positions to cut electives, combine classes and to bus students around. The legislature and our willingness to allow them to fund special interests and give tax breaks to a chosen few industries, not the class size amendment is the problem.

Our area superintendents should be asking them, no make that demanding that to do the right thing.

There are problems with the class size amendment, the solution however should not be to let the legislature off the hook from doing what it is supposed to and that’s taking care of our children.

7 Class size myths -- and the truth

Especialy relevent since the legislature is seeking to roll back the class size amendment, through Amendment 8, here in Florida. -CPG

By Leonie Haimson, executive director of the nonprofit Class Size Matters, and founder of the NYC Public School Parent blog.

Across the country, class sizes are increasing at unprecedented rates. An estimated 58,000 teachers were laid off in September, at the same time as enrollment was increasing in much of the country. In California, two thirds of the districts have seen jumps in class size, with many early grade classes rising from 20 to 30 students, after rules first established in 1996 governing the state’s class size reduction program were loosened.

As Don Iglesias, superintendent of public schools in San Jose was quoted as saying, "This is not a choice that anybody is making because we think increasing class size is a wonderful thing for our schools. It's a choice because there's ineptitude in terms of our elected officials in Sacramento and their unwillingness to raise taxes or cut programs accordingly."

In Texas, there are proposals to eliminate the state’s long- standing mandate to keep class sizes in grades K-4 to no more than 22 students; recommended by the Perot Commission and implemented by Gov. Mark White in 1984– a reform which has contributed to the state’s black and Hispanic students having some of the highest achievement levels in the country.

In Florida, voters are about to decide whether to amend their state’s class size constitutional amendment, originally passed in 2002, which would freeze class sizes where they were last year ------at school-wide averages of no more than 18 students in grades K-3, 22 in grades 4-9, and 25 in high school, rather than actual classroom caps.

Clearly budget pressures are weighing on school districts, but there has also been a fierce attack on the value of class size reduction. This attack is issuing from many of the wealthy foundations advocating for corporate-style reforms, and commentators who receive funding from these sources.

A recent example was a column originally written for the Hechinger Center and reprinted on this blog by Justin Snider, who teaches an introductory writing class at Columbia University. Snider claimed that class-size reduction programs in California and Florida now “look foolish” and are a “luxury ….we can no longer afford.”

Interestingly, Mr. Snider failed to mention that the writing class he teaches at Columbia is capped at no more than 15 students. Harvard College recently reduced the size of its writing classes to 10 students, in recognition of how labor intensive it is to teach students how to write well – even to these Ivy League students.

Meanwhile, public school teachers working just a few blocks away from Mr. Snider’s classroom endeavor to teach writing to as many as 34 high school students per class –and with total teaching loads of 150 students or more. Many of their students are poor and/or recent immigrants, and far more in need of individualized instruction than the high-achievers enrolled at Columbia University.

So perhaps its time to review what the research really says and what experience shows about the importance of reducing class size. Here are seven myths about class size, commonly repeated as gospel by the corporate-type reformers, juxtaposed with the facts.

1. Myth: Class size is an unproven or ineffective reform.

Studies from Tennessee, Wisconsin, and states throughout the country have demonstrated that students who are assigned to smaller classes in grades K-3rd do better in every way that can be measured: they score higher on tests, receive better grades, and exhibit improved attendance.

The Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education has concluded that class size reduction is one of only four, evidence-based reforms that have been proven to increase student achievement through rigorous, randomized experiments -- the "gold standard" of research. (The other three reforms are one-on-one tutoring by qualified tutors for at-risk readers in grades 1-3; life-skills training for junior high students, and instruction for early readers in phonics – and not one of the policies that the corporate reformers are pushing.

A recent re-evaluation of the STAR experiment in Tennessee revealed that students who were in smaller classes in Kindergarten had higher earnings in adulthood, as well as a greater likelihood of attending college and having a 410K retirement plan. In fact, according to this study, the only two “observable” classroom factors that led to better outcomes were being placed in a small class and having an experienced teacher.

2. Myth: There is a threshold that has to be reached before class size reduction provides benefits.

Since STAR involved comparing outcomes between students in classes of 22 to 25 students and those in classes of 13 to 17, many critics have argued that classes have to be reduced to a certain level to provide benefits.

Yet Alan Krueger of Princeton University analyzed the STAR results for the control group of students who were in the “larger” classes and found that within this range, the smaller the class, the better the outcome.

Indeed, esteemed researchers such as Peter Blatchford have found that there is no particular threshold that must be reached before students receive benefits from smaller classes, and any reduction in class size increases the probability that they will be on-task and positively engaged in learning.

3. Myth: Large scale programs such as class size reduction in California didn’t work.

Actually, every controlled study of the California class size reduction program --and there have been at least six so far—have shown significant gains from smaller classes.

Unlike the STAR studies, nearly all elementary schools in the state reduced class size at once --especially in grades K-2nd—so it was hard to find a control group with which to compare outcomes. Also, the state exam was new, making it difficult to compare achievement gains to past trends.

Yet given these limitations, the results were striking: even when analyzing the achievement of third graders who had the benefits of a smaller class for only one year, as compared to those who were in large classes, the gains were substantial, especially for disadvantaged students in inner-city schools.

In the five largest school districts other than Los Angeles, namely San Diego, San Francisco, Long Beach, Oakland and Fresno, researchers found that class size reduction raised the proportion of third graders who exceeded the national median by l0.5 % in math, and 8.4 % in reading, after controlling for all other factors. Even larger gains occurred in schools with high numbers of poor students, and in schools that had 100% black enrollment, lowering class size resulted in 14.7% more students exceeding the national median in math, and 18.4% more in reading.

Another researcher, Fatih Unlu, avoided some of the pitfalls encountered by other researchers who were stymied by the fact that the state tests were new and there were few students to use as a control group. In his paper, he instead analyzed the change in National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, and by using two different statistical methods, he found very substantial gains from smaller classes.

4. Myth: Class size reduction lowers the quality of teachers.

This urban legend is often repeated by the corporate-style reformers. Typical is the claim from Mr. Snider, that lowering class size in California “had the unintended effect of creating a run on good teachers: the best teachers tended to flee to the suburbs, which were suddenly hiring and which offered better pay and working conditions.”

Actually, though anecdotal reports at the time warned of teacher flight, what the follow-up studies from California showed is that after rising temporarily in all schools, teacher migration rates fell dramatically to much lower levels than before, and most sharply in schools with large numbers of poor students. In fact, for the first time, teacher migration rates began to converge in all schools, rich and poor.

This finding is not altogether surprising, since teachers in high-poverty schools had better working conditions and a real chance to succeed, their incentive to flee elsewhere was substantially alleviated. Indeed, other studies have confirmed that when class sizes are lowered, teacher turnover rates fall. This propensity would be expected to act synergistically to enhance teacher quality over time, as lower rates of attrition particularly in large urban districts would tend to increase the experience level and overall effectiveness of the teaching force.

5. Myth: Class size matters, but only in the early grades.

Although there has been no large scale experiment done for the middle and upper grades, as STAR did in the early grades, there are numerous studiesthat show smaller classes are correlated with achievement gains and/or lower dropout rates in the middle and upper grades as well.

One comprehensive study, done for the U.S. Department of Education, analyzed the achievement levels of students in 2,561 schools across the country. After controlling for student background, the only objective factor found to be positively correlated with student performance was smaller classes, not school size or teacher qualifications, nor any other variable that the researchers could identify. Moreover, student achievement was even more strongly linked to class size reduction in the upper grades than the lower grades.

Two recent studies that show that class size matters, even in college. One report from the University of Richmond found that increasing class size to thirty students to 45 had a negative impact on the amount of critical and analytical thinking required in business classes, on the clarity of presentations, the effectiveness of teaching methods, the instructor’s ability to keep students interested, and the timeliness of feedback, among many other key factors of educational quality.

Another study from Italy, found significantly lower achievement and smaller wages after graduation for college students, depending on how large their introductory lecture classes were. The effects were especially substantial for lower-income and male students:

”Our baseline results suggest that increasing class size by 20 students reduces a student’s wage by approximately 6 percent. Given this estimate, it would be hard to dismiss class size reduction as an ineffective and inefficient policy.”

7. Myth: Even if class size matters, it’s just too expensive.

Many studies have shown that class size reduction is cost-effective because it results in higher wages later in life (see the above study, for example), and lower costs for health care and/or welfare dependency.

One re-analysis of the STAR data published in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that reducing class sizes may be more cost-effective than almost any other public health and medical intervention, with large savings in health care and almost two years of additional life for those students who were in smaller classes in the early grades.

Moreover, there are some ingenious school leaders throughout the country who have managed to reduce class size without spending any more money, by redeploying out-of-classroom staff. See this study, for example, by Christopher Tienken and Charles Achilles, showing how a middle school in New Jersey managed to lower student failure rates from 3 to 6 percent to only one percent by reducing class size, at little or no extra cost.

Finally, even if reducing class size is costly, the question should be, compared, to what? As Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, once said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

If there are only a few reforms we know have substantial benefits to children, and improve their education, health, and life outcomes, why not invest in these reforms, rather than waste hundreds of millions of dollars, and in some cases billions on unproven policies with possibly damaging consequences, including the rapid expansion of charter schools, more high-stakes testing, and teacher performance pay, as promoted by the “Race to the Top” and other federal programs?

Also, class size reduction is one of very few educational interventions that have been proven to narrow the achievement gap, with students from poor and minority backgrounds experiencing twice the gains as the average student. While many of the high-achieving charter schools, such as the Icahn charter schools in the Bronx, and those highly celebrated such as Harlem Children’s Zone, cap class sizes at 18 or less, class sizes in our inner-city public schools continue to grow.

As a recent issue brief on the achievement gap from the Educational Testing Service pointed out, schools having high numbers of minority students are more likely to feature large classes of 25 students or more, with the class size gap between high-minority schools and low-minority schools larger over time. Don’t we have a moral obligation to provide equitable opportunities to all children?

So the next time somebody with power or influence tells you that class size reduction is a waste of money, ask him what the evidence-base is for the policies he favors instead. Or ask him what class sizes were in the school his own child attends.

Many of the individuals who are driving education policy in this country, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Bill Gates, sent their own children to private schools where class sizes were low and yet continue to insist that resources, equitable funding, and class size don’t matter – when all the evidence points to the contrary.

As John Dewey wrote, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.” If education is really the civil rights issue of our era, it is about time those people making policies for our schools begin to provide for other people’s children what they provide for their own.
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Taken from the Washington Post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/class-size/7-class-size-myths----and-the.html

Vote the ultimate special interest: our children

Every year politicians take care of special interests; bankers, homebuilders, bottled water producers, luxury box owners and even yacht salesmen got a substantial share of the pie last year. Sadly however there is one special interest that routinely loses out which is undoubtedly the ultimate special interest we have and that’s our children.

This November why don’t we say enough is enough. That we’re no longer going to sit on the sidelines and allow the powers-that-be in Tallahassee make a few rich beyond our wildest dreams while at the same time they fund our children fiftieth out of fifty and force them to attend a school system that doesn’t support or value their needs, taught by a group, teachers, that have unfairly become the scapegoats for all that is wrong in education.

I get how people must be frustrated with Teachers. Waiting for Superman, Race to the Top, Senate Bill Six, it seems you can’t turn your head without teacher quality being called into question, and maybe rightfully so, after all they are on the front lines of a battle we seem to be losing.

The thing is you must understand how frustrated teachers are too. They are on the frontlines but at the same time they have had their, weapons, their tools of the trade stripped from them. Gone are creativity and flexibility, replaced by a rigid doctrine that I imagine the powers-that-be think a highly trained chimp could carry out.

I remind you that this debate about teacher quality has only erupted after a decade long failed experiment in high stakes testing and a one size fits all curriculum that tries to fit every child into the same hole regardless of what type peg they might be. It was only after both children and teachers were put in situations where success was hard to achieve that teacher quality began to be questioned.

Teachers did not decide to gut discipline, teachers did not decide to get rid of teaching the trades and the arts, teachers did not promise the moon with the lottery but only deliver cheese and teachers did not replace a whole curriculum with teaching to one test. Yet they are the ones blamed for the failed results. Enough lets hold the policy makers who have never been in a classroom, like John Thrasher and he crafters of amendment 8 responsible and vote them out

Vote against amendment 8, another thinly veiled attempt for the legislature to shirk its responsibility to fund education.

Vote against John Thrasher who has only met one teacher he liked, his daughter and she only did it briefly.

Vote against Rick Scott, whose education plans other than to reinstate senate bill six are vague at best.

When are we going to say enough is enough? When are we as a society going to make providing for our children it’s foremost priority, after all what’s more important, yachts, bottled water, another subdivision, you tell me? There is only one special interested we should insist our politicians take care of. And despite the fact that they don’t vote and they don’t contribute to campaigns, they are still the most important special around and it is time we decided to start treating them that way.

Confused about Amendment 8? Good. That's what they want

By Jennie Smith, Dade County education policy examiner

"Our school features large classes, with a teacher-student ratio of 1 to 30, so that all of our students get a couple of minutes of individual attention every class period."

How many times have you heard that used as a selling point for private schools or charter schools?

The answer is, I am certain, never. One of the biggest draws of private, parochial and charter schools is small class size and thus more individual, personalized attention.

Parents know it matters. No parent relishes the thought of his or her child, particularly a child with special needs, a slow learner or one who is simply too shy to speak up and ask questions when he or she does not understand, languishing in the back of a packed classroom, where an entire class period can elapse without the child opening his or her mouth a single time.

Students know it matters. When they want to learn and understand, they like to be able to raise their hands and have the teacher's attention. They like to feel acknowledged. They appreciate it when their teacher notices that they were not in class one day, or that they look confused, or that they are struggling with the classwork just assigned.

Teachers certainly know it matters. Those people who seem to honestly believe that there is no significant difference between a class of 20 students and a class of 25, between a class of 25 students and one of 30 students, have obviously never been in front of a classroom. It matters. Just as every child matters to his parents, every student matters to a teacher, whether in a positive or negative way.

A brief example from personal experience: while, generally speaking, I cannot complain that, as a French teacher, I have had enormous classes, I did have one class of French I last year that fluctuated between 30 and 31 students all year. (My average last year was about 25, though several classes had 27 or 28, and a couple had around 22.) I noticed constantly in my largest class that there were students managing to "hide" by not speaking up, not raising their hands. While I do try to call on every student at least once every class period, and while I do try to gauge with my eyes and ears which students are showing comprehension and mastery and which ones seem lost, confused or uninterested, the more students there are in front of you, the more difficult that task becomes. Adding to the problem is that, in every class, there are those students who prefer to stand out (some of them seeking positive attention, others negative) and those who prefer to "hide." And any teacher can tell you that it is far easier to "hide" in a large class than in a small one, particularly when there are students demanding attention (and there always are)...whether by waving their hand in the air throughout the entire class, or by acting up so as to keep the focus on himself or herself.

In 2002, voters in the state of Florida ratified the Class Size Amendment by 52%. The amendment called on schools to gradually decrease the number of students in each classroom, so that by the year 2010, pre-kindergarten through third grade classes would have a hard cap of 18 students per teacher, 4th through 8th grade would be limited to 22 students per teacher, and core classes in high school would be limited to 25 per teacher. Up until last year, the amendment operated at the "schoolwide average," meaning that some classes could be over 25 as long as others were below.

The initiative, naturally, requires increased funding for public schools. While the voters approved the original amendment, legislators never properly funded the mandate, and indeed have knowingly underfunded it by $350 million; furthermore, they will impose heavy fines on districts found not in compliance of the law by this Friday.

As a result of the underfunding, many politicians and school boards are advocating that voters pass Amendment 8, which would loosen the class size limits to the schoolwide average, saying that it will protect electives and provide school sites with more flexibility in scheduling.

However, the state teachers' union, the Florida Education Association (FEA), local teachers' unions, and the state PTA, as well as a few public education-friendly politicians such as U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, are all encouraging voters to vote "no" on Amendment 8. The position of these groups and individuals is that the voters knew what they were asking for when they approved the initial amendment in 2002, and that the Republican-controlled legislature, known to be very supportive of charter schools and private school vouchers while trying to reduce the cost of public education in the state, will simply use the passage of Amendment 8 as an excuse to cut more money out of the education budget, costing teachers jobs and cramming students into larger classes once again.

In a nutshell: the voters approved the Class Size Amendment in 2002, against the explicit wishes of then-governor Jeb Bush. Since then, legislators have failed to properly fund the mandate to make it work as voters intended; this year they provided no additional funding for districts to meet the hard caps, although they estimated it would cost at least $350 million. This year, as a result of their refusal to fund the voter-ratified measure, some districts have been cutting or crowding electives (since the class size laws apply only to "core classes") and combining classes in an effort to balance their own budgets. The same politicians who have refused to fund what the voters asked for from the beginning now ask the voters to second-guess their original stance, claiming that it is bad for children--in short, asking for permission from voters not to fund smaller classes.

From a personal perspective, I am truly afraid that voters will not understand the implications and unintended consequences of Amendment 8.

Even at my own school, the principal has been rallying us, the teachers, to vote yes on Amendment 8, even without saying so in those words. She continuously bemoans the lack of funding to make it happen, the difficulty in scheduling the students with the hard caps on class size, and how some students are being moved around or denied their first choice in classes because of the restrictions. Her statements imply that it is literally that voting yes for Amendment 8 would do nothing more than allow that one extra student, that 26th warm body, to sit in your classroom.

I do not doubt the intentions of my principal, who has always been very receptive to suggestions and seems truly to have the interest of the students at heart. But I also do not doubt that she is mistaken. Even if she truly believes in her heart that relaxing the constitutional amendment as it currently stands will do nothing more than allow a 26th student to be in an Advanced Placement English class, the truth is that as soon as legislators have voters' "permission" to cut funding, they will do so, and more money will disappear from the public education budget. As class sizes are allowed to increase, teachers will lose their jobs, and shy or unmotivated students will once again be "hiding" in crowded classes.

Ironically, career-long advocate of charter schools and private school vouchers, the ex-governor Jeb Bush, claimed in a conference in Utah in August that smaller class sizes did not lead to increased student achievement. Yet class size is one of the main advantages the charter and private schools he supports so heartily have over public schools (along with the ability to control their student populations--i.e., choose their students and/or expel those students who do not conform to expectations of behavior and/or academic performance). How would the parents who so highly laud their children's private schools and charter schools feel if it were announced that, since class size "doesn't really matter," their children would suddenly be back in classes of 30, instead of 15 to 20?

It is disingenuous at best of the former governor to make such a claim.

The truth is, it is all about numbers, and not just the numbers of warm bodies in a given classroom. It is about the numbers of dollars and cents. Funding is a choice, even during a recession. Legislators have an opportunity every year during session to prioritize. In Florida, legislators have continued to prioritize prisons over schools, the testing industry over teachers, public monies for private enterprises over quality education for all students. Now, after refusing time and again to fund the mandate, they say, "See? We told you so," and ask you to take it back.

There is no money to fund class size limits so that teachers can teach and students can learn, yet somehow they can find the billions of dollars it would take to create the famous End of Course Exams (EOC) proposed in Senate Bill 6 to be used to evaluate teachers?

There always seems to be funding for another standardized test, another incompetent corporation to score and report those standardized tests, and for the state to pay for children to go to private, for-profit and religious schools with none of the accountability systems for their teachers that Jeb Bush and his cronies in the state legislature pushed, and continue to push, so hard for.

Voters knew what they were voting for in 2002. They were voting for all children, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status or special needs, to have the right to an education equal in all ways to that they could get in a private school: including smaller classes and more individual attention.

Recession or no recession, I do not think that desire has changed--not in parents, not in students and not in teachers.

One final note, on a personal level: Class Size Matters. It matters. Every student sitting in my classroom (or not sitting there, as the case may be) matters. My best classes this year are my smallest one. One has 15 students, and one has 19. In those classes, every single student is heard every single class--and not just once, or even twice, but usually several times, and whether they wish to be heard or not. When we read aloud (in French, of course!) every student has to read...there are enough lines of the text for everyone to read at least once. When we answer questions orally, I make sure that every student answers at least a couple of questions, if not more. Because there are fewer students, the load of papers to grade is more manageable, meaning my students get faster feedback. Nobody hides; nobody can. And everybody in those classes in learning.

And I don't need one of Jeb Bush's cronies' standardized tests to show me that. I can see it myself. Every day.

Taken from the Miami Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/dade-county-education-policy-in-miami/confused-about-amendment-8-good-that-s-what-they-want

Bait and switch, amedment 8

By, Rocky Hanna is principal of Leon High School in Tallahassee.

As a high school principal, I'm charged with ensuring the highest quality education possible to nearly 2,000 students every year.

This year I've received an education myself in how students can be used as a political football at the Capitol.

During the last legislative session, lobbyists approached me about supporting the legislation that would become Amendment 8 to revise the original class-size amendment. Unfortunately, I trusted politicians not to make cuts to education while providing flexibility, and I signed on to support the effort that became Amendment 8.

I've since come to realize I made a serious mistake.

Amendment 8 was misrepresented to me then, just as it is being misrepresented to voters now.

First, I was led to believe the flexibility in the amendment could be realized only by going to the ballot. This simply isn't true.

Flexibility in class size can be achieved through statute without changing the Florida Constitution.

In 2002, the Florida Supreme Court said that, "Rather than restricting the Legislature, the proposed amendment gives the Legislature latitude in designing ways to reach the class size goal."

This year, the Legislature proved that it could provide flexibility when it granted an exemption from class-size compliance to charter schools. Legislators are determined to force voters to rescind the amendment because they don't want to pay for it

The real eye-opener for me was when the politicians behind Amendment 8 said, "just trust us," this amendment won't mean less money for education, then refused to fund the final phase of implementation of the original class-size amendment.

They're touting a Florida TaxWatch report claiming Amendment 8 would save up to $1 billion per year. And get this - these politicians expect us to believe that if we vote for Amendment 8, they'll still use that money for education.

Don't make me laugh. I'm for flexibility, but not at the expense of losing up to $1 billion in education funding every year

Amendment 8 is the latest effort by politicians to water down, repeal or sidestep class-size reductions. But Floridians, including teacher and parent groups such as the PTA, are seeing through it.

I urge voters to reject Amendment 8 - it is a loser for public education and for our kids.

Note: how many sycophant principals of Ed Prattt-Dannals have the nerve to stick up for Florida's kids, like Rockey did? I will post every single one who does...

Paying for the class size amendment is easy, as easy as everybody teaching

One of the reasons certain people claim that want to roll back the class size amendment is it is too expensive. I happen to think we should spend as much as we need to assure our children receive a great education but I get it, times are tough, we have to prioritize. Well friends with that in mind I have a solution that isn’t going to cost us any extra money and keeps the class size amendment. It’s simple folks, everybody teaches.

Only about fifty-five percent of all the school district employees are teachers. The other forty-five percent of workers makes up custodians, paras, clerks and a bloated district staff of thousands of certificated (people eligible to teach) employees. We have cadre this and district that and more support staff than you can shake a stick at. Heck at the high school I work at we have about fifteen certificated people who don’t work in the classrooms with kids.

Lets put them all in classrooms for just one period a day and then I bet the increased costs
of the class size amendment will be seriously diminished if not out and out eliminated. It could have the added benefit of eliminating other problems as well. Our superintendent might realize that ignoring discipline is a detriment when he is threatened or told where to put his lesson plans. Principals might not insist on complicated two page lesson plans and voluminous data notebooks that only have a peripheral relationship with education if they have to make them themselves.

When a principal is teaching the vice-principal takes over and so on. For the hundred and hundreds of district people on the way to the school board building or where ever all they have to do is stop at their home school and teach a class. It’s that simple. Some might ask when will they have time to do their regular jobs to which I would answer, at night and on the weekends of course, the same time the district expects teachers to do many of their jobs as well.

You want to see reform? Let a school board member walk in a teacher shoes for one period a day and then have to do everything a teacher does. Then you will see reform. Instead of voting for amendment eight, how about you vote for everybody teaching instead.

Paying for the class size amendment is easy as easy as everybody teaching.

Vote no on amendment 8

Look there are problems with the class size amendment. Electives, exempt from the amendment are going to become dumping grounds and holding pens for kids. Special education classes, which traditionally have been small, will see their numbers rise too. Despite these two glaring over sites I think it’s time we stopped letting the state off the hook and began to fund education properly.

The Times Union who has never met a teacher whose opinion they like had a different more reasonable take on why we should vote for it and that is it is going to cost money and it is. This is different from the powers-that-be, whom in a completely lack of genuineness have long acted like they were suddenly doing the state a favor by trying to roll back the class size amendment, they say in order to give school districts more flexibility. To bad they didn’t think about that when they were doubling the homestead exemption, allowing owners of multiple houses and snowbirds take advantage of it and dozens of other breaks to special interests. This isn’t a favor to districts it’s the desire to continue to do favors for special interests that suddenly has the state in a panic to roll back the class size amendment.

Though it’s right about there that the Times Union starts to be disingenuous. In the last eight years despite glaring problems during the same time the class size amendment began to be phased in, the state of Florida saw tremendous learning gains, and what the Times Union sees as reasonable many of the citizens of Florida, parents teachers, and children see as giving the state one more opportunity to shirk it's responsibility to provide a first class education to the children if Florida. Furthermore for every Harvard story (way to cherry pick a study Times Union) I can show you ten that say smaller classes lead to increased learning.

There are indeed problems with the class size amendment but there are even more problems with amendment 8 and chief is it was written by people who don’t really care about education or the states children.

Don’t let them off the hook, insist the state takes education seriously, and insist they tell our children that they are important

The Times Union seals its fate

The Times Union's editorial supporting amendment 8, or the let the state off the hook from paying for education amendment said, A study this year on Florida's class-size amendment by Harvard University's Program on Policy and Performance found no evidence that the more than $16 billion the state has spent in reducing class sizes has improved student achievement.

We spent 16 billion dollars? Well thank goodness for the class size amendment then. We have been dead last or close to last for about a decade on education spending, think how bad it would have been without the sixteen billion dollars. We would have been behind states like Alabama and West Virginia, oh wait we already are. Furthermore for every Harvard study the Times Union can find saying that class size plays no role, I am sure I can find ten that says it does.

I really don’t get why the Times Union is so anti-education, don’t they understand by not promoting education, as educated people are the ones who typically read the newspaper, they are sealing their own fate.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher