Today’s entry: Fox has published about the pushback from parents regarding Equity in SDPBC and the false, untruthful reply from School Board Chairman Frank Barbieri who said that the SDPBC’s statement was ‘intended to show the board’s dedication to improving equality in Florida public schools.
This is true disinformation as equality and equity are in opposition. He may be attempting to calm less informed parents who haven’t discovered the meaning and intent of equity (versus equality).
If this was not EQUITY related, then why was Keith Oswald given the new ‘critically important new assignment’ as the Chief of Equity and Wellness. Chairman Frank Barbieri is purposely misinforming the parents of SDPBC students. Equity, CRT, and anti-racism exist to create new truth by removing facts and science.
This school board is out of control and doesn’t listen to parents, as was experienced during this COVID school year. The entire board (who approved this equity project) needs to be voted out.
Bottom Line: I agree. Yes, when it comes to our school boards in South Florida, we have a problem. My theme of 2020, every election has consequences and it’s often those closest to you that have the greatest impact on your daily life. With very few South Floridians having elections left to consider this year and with everyone literally having a vested interest in our public schools, with property taxes being the primary funding source for them, the theme for the rest this year should be to take back our schools.
Heading into this year’s state session my top priority was expanded school choice for precisely the reasons you’re discussing. Well, the legislature delivered by significantly expanding what was already the country’s largest school choice program. The apparent attempt at a veiled CRT program by the School District of Palm Beach County, uncovered by concerned citizens such as yourself and now picked up on by national news media, is just the latest in a long line of poor leadership decisions by the District.
Now, Broward School District engaged in the Promise diversion program, which errors on the side of keeping troubled students in schools. They then even failed to follow through the steps of the program for countless students none the least of which was Nikolas Cruz. Of course, that goes back a few years at this point, and remarkably in a matter of four months this year, the Broward School District had their CIO arrested and Superintendent arrested for perjury and their top attorney for unlawful disclosure/interference of a grand jury’s proceedings pertaining to the districts aforementioned failures. How many national stories are those which have nothing to do with excellence in education? Even in Miami-Dade, which in my view is the best-managed district in the Tri-County (largely because of the leadership of Superintendent Alberto Carvalho), the board pressured Carvalho to do an about-face on the decision to allow students to be mask free outside for the rest of the school year and initially resisted optional masks for the next school year before parents made their voices heard and the District acquiesced.
So yes, we have problems with our school boards. So, what should we do? The bottom line is that as concerned citizens, regardless of whether we have kids in South Florida’s public schools or not, we have to reclaim and reform public education and it starts right here at home. Under Governor DeSantis we’ve had expanded school choice, the eradication of Common Core and mandatory civics education, that’s great but we also have to do our part at the district level. Our school boards are simply a product of what we’ve voted for, or most commonly in the case of local elections, not voted for.
The good news is that there’s a path forward. As Bill Barr pointed out last Thursday, the real systemic racism is within our public schools. We have so much going for us in South Florida, but we have real issues within our public education establishments. It’s time to take back our schools by having accountable and responsible school board members. All of our big picture issues locally and nationally will be addressed if we’re successful in doing this.
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Parler & Twitter: @brianmuddradio
Photo by John Moore/Getty Images