Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
To the consternation of Jefferson County School Board members, the virtual school that Jefferson Somerset wants to implement won’t go away. Or so it seems.
After voting down the proposal twice in the last nine months – the first time in July 2020 and then again in February – the application was back before the school board last week.
Only this time the application came before the board in the form of an evaluation by School Superintendent Eydie Tricquet, as required by the Florida Department of Education (FDOE).
Although the item was listed as the 10th action item on the school board’s agenda for Monday, April 12, its discussion ensued almost as soon as the meeting commenced.
School Board Member Shirley Washington raised the issue, asking that the item be removed from the agenda.
Washington said she didn’t understand why the virtual school was back before the board when it had been voted down twice previously. And especially given that the last time that it had come before the board in February, the superintendent had said that additional procedures were needed, she said.
“The decision has been made,” Washington said, referring to the earlier votes.
The way that School Superintendent Eydie Tricquet and School Board Attorney George Thomas Reeves explained it, the evaluation before the board was a necessary part of the process for the rejection or approval of the application.
It also, they said, set the basis for the FDOE’s acceptance or rejection of the school board’s decision, should Somerset not like the decision and appeal it higher.
“You can deny the application but you have to evaluate it,” Reeves said. “My advice, if you want to turn it down, is that you evaluate it and say why it failed to meet the criteria. But as it stands now, they (Somerset) are likely to prevail in an appeal because you haven’t given any reason for its denial.”
Tricquet added that it was her responsibility to evaluate the application and make a recommendation to the board for its acceptance or denial. But it was up to the board ultimately to accept or reject the recommendation, she said.
She further explained that the reason that she had said what she said at the February meeting about the additional procedures being needed was because she had been new on the job and hadn’t understood that she was required to do an evaluation before submitting the application to the board. She had, however, since done the evaluation and was recommending its approval.
A lengthy discussion ensued as to how the board should respond to the application, with four of the members – Gladys Roann-Watson being the exception – expressing outright opposition to the virtual school for various reasons.
Washington said she didn’t understand enough to vote on the application, especially when she looked at the benchmarks.
“I haven’t had time to read and evaluate the benchmarks,” she said.
She also had concerns about the effect it would have on the FTEs (Full time equivalent - the formula used to determine funding per full time student) given the district’s 750 or so students. What effect would it have on the district, if the FTE funding went away with the students that attended the virtual school.
School Board Member Bill Brumfield also didn’t see how the virtual school would benefit Jefferson County students, given the poor quality of the Internet locally.
“The Internet is terrible here,” Brumfield said. “They (Somerset) will only get a few students locally, but they will get kids from down south. (The virtual school would be statewide). I just don’t see much benefit to us here.”
School Board Sandra Saunders agreed. She also had concerns about the proposal, including the poor Internet quality locally and the potential loss of FTEs. And with the loss of FTE would also come the loss of teachers, she said.
She also knew from personal experience that virtual school learning required strong parental oversight, which wasn’t often the case in Jefferson County, she said.
Saunders said she saw a contradiction. On the one hand, she said, Somerset talked about bringing students back to a brick-and-mortar setting because online classes were proving problematic. Yet on the other hand, here Somerset was promoting a virtual school.
“We’re either going to keep the teachers and the bricks-and-mortar classrooms or lose the teachers and the FTEs,” Saunders said. “I’ve got more cons than pros on this.”
She would rather, she said, focus on the transition plan for how the district was going to take back the schools at end of the 2021-22 school year.
Brumfield offered that knowing the FDOE as well as he did from his days dealing with it as the superintendent, the agency was going to do as it liked and override whatever the board’s decision on Somerset’s application.
“I’m telling you,” Brumfield said. “I’ve dealt with the FDOE and it’s like the commission from hell. They’ll make us take this (virtual school).”
School Board Chairman Charles Boland questioned the point of the school board even making a decision on the application if the FDOE was going to overrule it.
“Is this democracy if they can override what we do?,” he asked. “What’s the point of making a decision if someone else is pulling the strings?”
The discussion continued along these lines for a while longer before Roann-Watson suggested a workshop to address the expressed concerns and better evaluate the application. Which is what the board ultimately decided to do, setting the workshop for 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 27, in the school board room.