DCPS is risking lives, I said it but we are all thinking and know it

 The stories I have heard are both heartbreaking and infuriating, sick parents of exposed children kept in the dark, and a terminally ill child left to fend for herself as the department of health drags their heels. Then just throw in the run of the mill danger that the district seems quite content to put staff and students in and we have beyond a recipe for disaster.

I received this over the weekend.

Chris, I have loved reading your posts over this past year. I am an elementary school teacher in Duval. My para just tested positive for Covid yesterday, and I have been told I cannot tell my parents/ students. Meanwhile, one of their mothers is severely immunocompromised. I am flabbergasted because my assistant was everywhere in the classroom working with all the children. My gut tells me the whole class should quarantine, but no one will help or tell me anything. We just have to wait 3-4 days at least for DOH to tell us what to do.

This teacher is not allowed to reach out to her families and let them know. The Superintendent and school board think waiting for the DOH to contact them is the route to go when they have proved over the last year they are not up for the job.   

I just got off the phone with a teacher who told me one of the staff in their child classroom tested positive last Thursday and as of yet nobody has reached out to them, they just hoped and prayed they reached out to the child with cancer in the room. 

Why can't teachers tell their families and at very least let them decide what to do? That is the decent and right thing. 

I literally just had this conversation on Facebook. I am the blue.

Just wanted to share about your post on reporting Covid numbers. I personally have 2 confirmed positives in my class, but 6 others also out sick and they can come back at anytime because we are told we can no longer ask them to get tested. Our school is only reporting 5 on the dashboard but just from 2 others classrooms close to mine, there are 7 other confirmed cases. That’s a total of 9 just in our three classes.

Enter

You can now message and call each other and see info like Active Status and when you've read messages.

You sent

and your classes has anybody been quarantined?

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Jessica

It’s been hard to go into work everyday and be happy for the students with the “leadership.” No quarantining has taken place at all for my classroom and I had two more positives reported today.

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Jessica

I was told they can’t do anything or notify anyone until the Department of Health tells them to.

Enter

You sent

The super and board are nothing but cowards for passion the buck to the DH who we all know are not up for the job and shame on them all. 

Is DCPS under reporting its COVID Cases?

I asked teachers on my personal Facebook Page and three other Facebook pages that have to do with local education if they were having cases of COVID at their schools that weren't making the dashboard. I received a few dozen responses and the answer to my question seems to be yes. 

Several people that responded said their children were at charter schools and those cases weren't being reported. Now charter schools don't make the dashboard but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. How is a parent supposed to make the most informed decision about their child's safety if they aren't getting the information? 

Most of the people that replied said they knew of cases in district schools that weren't being reported. 

I crossed referenced the people who reached out to me with the DCPS Covid dashboard and some of the schools had cases identified but some did not. It wasn't enough for me to point my finger and say DCPS is cooking the books after all an anecdote is not evidence, but what about a half dozen?

St John's County is a quarter of our size and reported 155 cases in one day.

https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2021/08/16/st-johns-county-schools-report-155-covid-19-cases-after-1st-day/?

Hillsborough, a little bigger than us, opened the same day as us and they are up to hundreds of cases and thousands of quarantines. 

Speaking of quarantines the district seems to want to keep this is a secret.

My thought is we are barely quarantining anyone because our contact tracing is woeful, risking lives to keep seats in butts is acceptable to our administration, or both. I would love to be proven wrong but as somebody who has seen firsthand how bad it is, I don't think I will be. 

But let's keep going.

Then there is Manatee County and Alachua Counties which also much smaller than DCPS but have reported a greater amount of cases. 

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/education/2021/08/16/alachua-county-school-board-members-may-extend-mask-mandate/8154338002/

https://www.mysuncoast.com/2021/08/16/manatee-school-board-mulling-mask-mandate/

Now I want to qualify all this. It's possible DCPS is reporting accurate numbers, that they are doing everything right, but you will forgive me if I have my doubts. 

The Wayman Academy of the Arts pays millions in rent, to themselves

Reverend Mark L. Griffin painted a very disingenuous picture of charter schools, short on sources. I have sent all the sources below to the editor, or you can find them on the blog, Education Matters.

Charter schools are businesses, and nobody should think differently. Everyone should understand that business is booming in Florida, especially in cities where there are special referendums to help public schools.  

The most obvious question is how the operators make money. The answer is real estate. As exhibit number one, let's take Griffin's Wayman Academy for the Arts, located at 1167 Labelle Street. 

That office is also the location of 7 other businesses, including the property owner, the West Jacksonville Economic Development Corp, of which Griffin is listed as a director, and the Wayman Temple AME church. In 2004, five years after the charter school was founded, the church sold itself at nine times what they bought it for in 1989. The reason? Apparently to pay themselves rent.     

https://clustrmaps.com/a/3umimn/

https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_fl/N04000000832

Since 2015 as far back as I could access, they have paid themselves 360 thousand dollars a year. If that is how much they have charged themselves, remember they are paying themselves rent since 2005, that is a little over 5.7 million dollars on a property currently valued at 2,750,000 dollars. 

https://www.waymanacademy.org/public-records/

https://paopropertysearch.coj.net/Basic/Detail.aspx?RE=0666050000

That 5.7 million is their profit. That 5.7 million dollars is money that never saw the inside of a classroom. 

Extrapolate that out to the 29 out of 32 other Duval charter schools that are leased. We are talking tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars that went into operators' pockets and not into classrooms.   

Do you know what is absolutely crazy about this? It is that it's absolutely legal, sadly in Florida, however legal and right often doesn't go hand in hand. 

Then there are Reverend Griffin's assertions that might sound good until you add context, something charter school supporters never want to supply.

Griffin says in the states, 700 charter schools enrollment is up 3.6 percent during the pandemic. 

He both doesn't mention the hundreds of charter schools that have taken public money and closed, and there are undoubtedly lots of reasons why somebody might choose a charter school over a traditional public school. Some families, like bright and shiny new things, over schools that have endured over a decade of cuts. The private school feel, the constant bashing of public schools by the state's leaders, and the fact that there are just more and more of them may be other reasons, enrollment has nominally gone up. Then both locally and sadly, our school board has not meant a charter school it didn't like and approves them like that, and not taking care of our schools is their job. 

Then let's talk about that sixty-nine percent figure he cites, implying charter schools are cheaper. Charter schools are not required to provide the same level of services and options that public schools are. Fewer services, less need for money. When you throw in PECO funds, money for maintenance, charter schools have gotten hundreds of millions over the last decade while public schools barely pennies. Addin the money the state often allocates to individual charter schools and federal grants, then how much the public is actually investing in them skyrockets.

https://www.fldoe.org/finance/fco/peco-capital-projects-plans.stml 

Griffin then applauds that some charter schools go out of business, wasting billions, and he seems to think it is okay that public schools compete against each other. Let me ask the reader a question, would you think a half dozen police stations or fire stations in the same section of town competing for resources would be a good idea? Of course not and neither is it a good idea for schools. 

Finally, like Gary Chartrand, who had a pro-charter op-ed printed last week, Griffin fundamentally misunderstands what Charters are supposed to be. They were supposed to be parent/teacher-driven laboratories of innovation, not profit centers for investors and hedge funds. This innovation was supposed to be then brought back and replicated in public schools. Charters weren’t supposed to compete with public schools; they were supposed to be partners and help innovate them.   

Charter schools, by and large, are not here to educate our children. They are here to make money, and business is booming. 

To read Griffin's screed, hit the link https://www.jacksonville.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2021/08/15/guest-column-why-so-many-charter-schools-parents-want-them/5493835001/.

Brevard County provides Covid leave to its staff, will DCPS?

 This is what the Brevard County union is telling its membership.

Dear Members, First and foremost, I hope that you manage to have a fantastic school year! Today a reporter asked me what students and parents could expect this year. I told him that teachers are thrilled to see their students again, will welcome them back with open arms, and will do their best to meet their needs. I know you all will rise to meet this year’s challenges.We believe that the agreement we came to at the table surrounding our COVID-19 Memorandum of Agreement for the first semester will provide the leave, mitigation strategies, and other policies to help you do so. Some of the highlights are: -10 days of paid leave if you have COVID, have to quarantine, are experiencing symptoms and seeking a diagnosis, caring for someone who is quarantining, or caring for a child whose daycare/school is closed due to COVID-19 -An additional 5 days of leave if you are fully vaccinated and acquire COVID-19 and require the time -The choice to not use leave time and work remotely if you have COVID or are quarantining or caring for someone who is -Ability to use comp time in lieu of sick time -While Brevard County is identified as having high or substantial transmissibility and 6ft of social distance cannot be provided for, admins or district trainers must provide a virtual link for meetings and professional development (If the board adopts a mask policy, the social distance requirement becomes 3 ft.) -Notification of positive cases at the school or site -Procedures for working remotely in the event of a school or district closing -No hybrid instruction -Ability to volunteer to sub during your planning for $15 per class As soon as possible, we will post the MOA at BFTteach.org. Also, we will vote on this electronically in the next couple of weeks. Details on the vote will be provided soon. In solidarity, Anthony Colucci, President

Brevard Federation of Teachers | Brevard County | BFT

bftteach.org

How are Gary Chartrand and charter schools still a thing?

 When the Times Union publishes its quarterly screed from Gary Chartrand about the benefits of school choice and saving kids from failing public schools it always makes me shake my head and sigh. Of all the people one can listen to about education, he should be at the bottom of the list. 

Mr. Chartrand a grocer by trade parlayed huge donations to Rick Scott into a position on the state board of education, where draconian measures became the state policy of the day. Funding to school districts decreased (we still aren’t back to 2007 levels), teacher salaries decreased, the number of unfunded mandates exploded and testing became the end all be all in our public education system under Chartrand’s watch. 

In his latest submission, he says charter schools are public schools and technically he may be right, but the reality is they are publicly funded private schools that must take the state tests. Charter schools unlike traditional public schools pick who they take and keep and are exempt from many of the rules and fore mentioned unfunded mandates that traditional public schools are required to follow.    

Furthermore, most charter schools’ priority is not to educate children, it is to make money, after all, they are businesses first, and schools are somewhere down the list.  

I am sure in a rebuttal letter Mr. Chartrand would say all charters have to be non-profits, but like most things he says about education, that only tells a fraction of the story. Let’s take the Charter School USA model as an example. Duval has a half dozen CUSA schools.   

CUSA in reality is a for-profit management company, and like many charters, they are hired by a nonprofit to run their schools. Also like many charters, both the nonprofit and management company are run by the same people. They also have a construction arm that will build and lease the charter school back to the nonprofit at a substantial mark up, and that’s the game, real estate. Mr. Chartrand knows this too because the school he represents KIPP recently sold itself to another sister entity so it could pay rent to it. How big of a practice is this? Well according to an article in the Times Union 29 of Duval’s 32 schools are leased. 

Sadly, Mr. Chartrand has a basic misunderstands of what charters were supposed to be. They were supposed to be parent/teacher-driven laboratories of innovation, not profit centers for investors and hedge funds. This innovation was supposed to be then brought back and replicated in public schools. Charters weren’t supposed to compete with public schools, they were supposed to be partners and help innovate them.   

Let’s take a quick look at some of the charters here in Jacksonville. Mandarin an area of town with some of the finest schools not just in the city but in the state as well has more charters than anywhere else in the city. What are these parents fleeing? A good education for their children is what.  

DCPS has approved two Charter schools run by a woman named Erica Donalds who has said gay people don’t have to burn in hell and has advocated for the burning of books. They, the Classical Academies also get their curriculum from the far-right Hillsdale college which some have compared to white supremacists. We approved four new IDEA charter schools which recently fired their founder and CEO for financial malfeasance and are allowing another charter school to be built right across the road of an A-rated school. You are probably asking why we would approve these schools. Well during Mr. Chartrand’s time in the state board, Florida made it nearly impossible to say no to any charter school application.   

I would also like to point out that hundreds of charter schools in Florida have opened, taken public money, and failed, including two of Chartrand’s KIPP schools.   

I want to acknowledge that some charters do it right, they are good stewards of public money and bring innovative teaching methods to their students, but those schools aren’t nearly as plentiful as Chartrand would have the people reading his quarterly Times Union submission believe. Public education, and that handful of charters that are good partners with it, not publicly funded for-profit businesses, not charters as Florida does them, is where our limited resources should go.   

From masks to whatever a timeline.

 July 27th the school board after discussing masks said they would meet the following week after consulting with experts to make their decision. 

On July 30th, even before the executive order came out, Greene announced that because of the EO students would not be required to wear masks.

July 30th-August 2nd, she repeated above to constituents.

August third the SB meets and decides everyone will have to wear masks with a parental/guardian opt-out provision. Much of the city rejoiced.

August 5th Greene says there will be no consequences for students not wearing masks effectively rendering any mask policy moot.

At some point don't we have to just say Greene isn't down with masks? That students not wearing them is the policy that SHE wants?

When she says the district is going to do everything to keep staff and students safe, we know that is not true, because we can point to her actions.

Greene snubs her nose at the school board, masks, and the raging pandemic.

 Last week superintendent Greene sent a letter to staff saying that students will not be required to wear masks because of the governor's executive order. She said the same thing to constituents who sent her letters requesting children wear masks.  

However, the school board felt differently and days later defied both the governor and superintendent when they said students will be required to wear masks unless their parents opt them out. 

Well, superintendent Greene said, hold my beer as she announced there would be zero, none, nadda consequences for children who won't wear masks. A rule without a consequence for breaking the rule isn't a rule, it's a suggestion. She basically snubbed her nose at the board and once again sided with a governor. 

I teach in the district and I am not even going to try and have my students wear masks because what's the point, our dear leader at the school board building, ignoring all medical experts, science, and what's happening around her has told the district not to bother.

To learn more, click the link, https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2021/08/04/duval-superintendent-students-will-not-be-disciplined-if-they-dont-wear-masks/?fbclid=IwAR0Vzw50S2imprEdK0qMvPQvQ0ZsicVwrzmXlaW-cnd70ZiiPXJs2SYUN6M

My keep masks pitch to DCPS

 I want to say I am over masks, I do not want to wear them any longer, and I definitely do not want to fight with that one kid every day to keep their mask on correctly. It wasn't easy keeping my mask on while teaching, and I have done the latter, and it was no fun. That being said, if it would keep them and me and my family safer, I am more than willing to do so. 

By now, we all know that the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics have both said all staff and students should wear masks in the hot zone, and sadly, there are fewer places hotter than Jacksonville. The fact that we are having a debate whether to listen to them or the Governor who has been called out for spreading misinformation and even had videos taken down off of youtube is crazy to me. I don't believe this is about freedom, but instead, it is about dividing us and ginning up his base. In short, it's not about health; it's about politics and. I think I can prove so as well. 

Look at these two screengrabs from House member Randy Fine. In one, he itches for a special session to outlaw masks, and in the other, he tells a parent he can help find them a voucher school that requires masks. The hypocrisy is stunning, and the message, do all we can to injure public education, is clear. 

As for freedom, is requiring masks any more inconvenient than requiring seatbelts, outlawing smoking in public, or a thousand other things that we cannot do because it keeps society safer? I don't think so. Yet somehow this became an issue and during a pandemic to boot. 

Then there is the executive order. First, there is a lack of consensus that it is even legal.

Regardless DCPS and numerous school boards have taken the state to court from time to time when they thought it was warranted, and with the health of staff and students on the line, I would argue there is no better time or reason. Then I think school boards should always challenge executive orders. Letting them go unchallenged erodes the authority of local school boards, which, as we all know, have been greatly eroded over the years. If boards had been more aggressive in the past, we probably wouldn't be where we are now. Then a question I always ask is, where and when does it stop? Well, I think randy Fine answered that question above.     

Finally, I wanted to say where there was a lot to be disappointed with the superintendent's email to staff, saying they will be required to wear masks, one of the things that stood out was the usurpation of the school board's authority. I watched your last meeting online, which finished with Mrs. Andersen saying that you would make the decision next week after more consultation. Greene's email effectively rendered you irrelevant if you let it stand. The other thing was when she said if it were up to her, kids would wear masks. If you felt kids would be safer by wearing masks, aren't you obligated, regardless of the EO, to do all you can to make sure that happens? The superintendent obviously doesn't feel that way, but I hope that you do.

Requiring masks should be the easiest decision DCPS makes, why its not is befuddling and scary.

 It is befuddling to me that health measures like wearing masks and vaccinations have become so divisive. In times of trouble, the citizens of the United States used to put aside their differences and do what is best for the country. Sadly those times were both a long time ago and gone. That being said, it is why leadership is important now.

Superintendent Greene, in an email t the district staff said, "  The governor announced today that he would be issuing an Executive Over to prevent school districts from mandating mask requirements for students.  Had it not been for this announcement, this 30-day mandate would be applied to all PreK-12 students as well and would extend for elementary students when indoors until such time as vaccinations are readily available and families can elect to have their students vaccinated. "

She says she disagrees with the governor, that if it were up to her, she would require masks for our students. She is saying she believes masks will help keep children safe and help stop them from potentially getting sick or worse. My question to the super and the community is if you believe masks are important, aren't you morally obligated to do everything you can to see children wear them in order to keep our children safe? How, on the one hand, can she say, masks will protect children, but on the other say, I am not going to require them because our governor, who is often dismissive of science, and who has peddled false information, says he doesn't want them, which seems to me to be a political calculation on his part, to increase and cement divisiveness rather than a position based on science. 

Both the CDC and the American pediatrics association have said that wearing masks in school is important as this strain of COVID surges. In matters of health, aren't they who we should be listening to? For Greene to admit she agrees with them, but then for her not to do everything she can is both inexplicable and inexcusable. 

Some people might point to DeSantis's executive order as a reason for the supers inaction; well, since Florida is no longer under a state of emergency (though we probably should be), his power to create mandates is limited, and we should all be wary of an executive officer that rules through fiat. Then there was a time when the republican party championed local control, but like many things, that notion is a relic of the past. Finally, DCPS and many districts have taken the state to court in the past, and what better reason would there be than to keep our staff and students safe? 

Others will say that requiring masks takes away their freedom. Well,  public schools already require a handful of vaccinations; we can't smoke in most public places because secondhand smoke can kill people, and we are required to wear seatbelts and get a fine if we don't, among many other instances where society has decided the limited reigning in of personal choices benefits us all. In short, I guess you could say that these and a thousand other things infringe on our freedom, but the reality is we trade a little freedom for the smooth and safe running of society, and wearing a mask, especially during a pandemic, isn't a whole lot to ask.

On a personal note, I am frustrated with my unvaccinated neighbors, often the ones who complain the loudest about masks. We are in this position because of their selfish choices. I was looking forward to not wearing a mask in school and not fighting with that one kid every day to wear their mask correctly, but I am more than willing to do so if it keeps them and me and my family safer. That is my goal with masks, and how it's not the superintendents is both disappointing and beyond me.