PETITION AND CALL TO ACTION!!!

WE THE UNDERSIGNED DEMAND TO BE HEARD AND OUR CHILDREN’S VOICES HEARD!

I am calling DUVAL COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS out on their plan to close 30 schools as a "solution" to decreased enrollment and loss of FTE's!! In 17 years, I worked as a private school teacher, strategic planning consultant, charter school curriculum specialist, helped AUTHOR and teach the workshops for the FLDOE Common Core Institute (the curriculum that emerged from that would stun most people in and of itself), a district academic coach in Volusia, a charter school administrator for KIPP, and a Duval county public school teacher! My masters in leadership and doctoral studies in special ed, behavioral science and organizations and assessment lent itself to my ability to continually find the "holes", the gaps, the flaws (including the district-created assessments to prepare students for the almighty FSA!) I witnessed the diminishing of wonderful educators, the exodus of "SCHOOL"--a student-centered place of learning and community and the transformation into an ugly, politically controlled bureaucracy run by people who have no knowledge or understanding of young minds, learning, cultural and economic barriers, or how to identify and remedy the obvious and continuous REAL problems. Would you let the mailman do surgery if you needed it? Then why are we allowing governments to "standardize" and dictate how schools and districts function? We scream differentiation and demand that every kid in every grade and every teacher be doing the same thing...with EVERY kid...at the same time!! We socially promote so that the failure rates are skewed, and school administrators are afraid to address and record discipline for fear of the district 'intervening" and we keep putting band aids on bullet holes and scratching our heads in disbelief! We don't offer high school age kids any alternative to a university or prison-track education plan. We don't equally distribute tax dollars across neighborhoods to ensure that ALL our kids have access to great technology. We erase all the music, art, theater, and shove kids into remedial classes to fill the gaps that are sooooo many years in the making there is no way to begin...instead of offering them something they might be more successful at!! We cow tow to parents who demand their child be excused, promoted, not disciplined....and then we get angry when the parents who want BETTER for their kids pull them out of this flawed failed debauchery and enroll them in a CHARTER or private school!!!!!! We spend more money on highway repairs and our football stadium than we even come CLOSE to investing in our students, teachers and schools.... and the magical answer is to close 30 ??????????? How do we get an appearance on the local news channels to discuss and broadcast this? How do we get a panel with DeSantis, the school board members and city leaders, parents and educators and demand that they do BETTER for our city's KIDS??????????