School district improvement needed
To the editor:
There is something terribly wrong with the Lee County School System, financially, academically and, probably morally. Unfortunately most taxpayers see only a facade of feel-good propaganda. Now, I understand that most people know little or care little about the school system unless some major catastrophe like the start time episode impinges directly on their lives. And, yet, the district is one of the biggest business enterprises in Lee County. It spends a billion and a half tax dollars annually, has nearly 10,000 employees, etc. It is a mega-corporation which required top administrative expertise, plus stringent oversight but, regrettable has none of these. Sloppy management methods rarely show themselves in prosperous times but come to haunt us in adversity as our present problems demonstrate.
Our biggest problem is the quality of education. Frankly, it is a second-rate education which relies on public indifference and that people rely on the FCAT test as a measure of excellence but FCAT is merely a beauty-pageant designed by the educational elite to make the system look good. The real assessment of intellectually accomplishment is measured by the SAT and ACT tests. All three of these tests show the academic deficiencies of our school under the Browder regime. (You can verify these results yourself on the DOE Web site. It shows that, during the last five years we have been below state and national norms with almost no verifiable improvement. Example, last year, 60 percent of 10th graders read below state and national levels. Similar deficiencies showed in math and science. And, yet, the board was bragging about a 3 percent increase in the graduation rate. But that means that we are graduating more students with less education,. We paid for a Cadillac but got a Yugo. This is not the teachers’ fault but the policies set by the administration.
Another deficiency is in finances. I have watched board meetings for a decade and under Browder I have never heard a serious discussion of money. The board merely rubber stamps anything laid before it. All I hear is whining about the mego-millions we are losing in cuts from Tallahassee, the impact fees and lower property taxes but never any plans as to what we should be doing to meet the upcoming hard years. They started with the fire-the-flunkies approach and curtailing progress, the superintendent, personally killed the idea of borrowing from the $500 million construction reserve as was just approved in Collier County. Reserve funds are cut to a minimum. The superintendent who is a double dipper had the audacity to ask the board to renegotiated his contract and they approved a $342,000 “golden parachute” which may be implemented at his option. But nobody noticed that this new contract eliminated the ethics clause. Obviously, we are taxing the needy to reward the greedy and giving a Nixon/Ford type pardon in advance in case ethical violations come to light. Meanwhile, other board members want a financial bailout from Tallahassee, a pie-in-the-sky delusion devoid of reality.
Thus, we face 2009 as a looming economic catastrophe without planning and no safety net for anyone except the superintendent. This is the worst of corruption, the corruption of stupidity. So, as the months drag on and teachers are fired and programs like music and arts are cut, perhaps the public will awake from its indifference.
Peter S. Hare
Cape Coral