I will add more details later, but here is an overview of what happened at the Board meetings on Monday and Tuesday. Make sure to read both the section on the School Board, AND the County Board's controversial workshop on the Economic Development program below.
School Board Issues
- The School Board decided to go ahead with an application for the "Race to the Top" Federal Grant. It was controversial because the Board would have to sign an agreement that lacked a lot of specifics, and they were worried they would be tied down to future, unspecified actions when the agreement did specify sanctions if they did not go through with the program. Basically, this was a POORLY written agreement from the State to file an application to be part of a Florida State application competing against other states to get some of the available funds, which are significant. I was not at the Monday night meeting, but was at an earlier workshop where all the background was discussed. Below my comments is a memo from Board member Cindy Barrow that describes the decision and the Board went ahead and signed the agreement.
Another controversial point is that the program requires merit pay or bonuses for teachers and most teacher unions fight that. However, I have been reading over the last year that merit pay is an Obama philosophy, so I expect it to continue. Remember, the local teacher's union turned down the chance for 1/3 of their members to qualify for a State merit bonus two years ago.
So, the Board vote on Monday to move ahead with the application is only the first step. Now, over the next 90 days, the Board will have the chance to get more details on the grant, and assemble a more detailed plan (which would require changes in internal District processes) and see if they really want to participate in it.
Basically, the Feds are using their funds to dictate how State and local School Districts operate, so expect CHANGE.
In my opinion, the School Board acted fiscally well in investigating ramifications before they made a decision to ensure they were not locked into a vague program without the ability to "opt out" later if revisions made the program unacceptable.
Lake County Board Issues
The big issue at Tuesday's meeting, as discussed in my blog entry yesterday, was a workshop on the Economic Development Commission.
As expected, Board Chair Welton Cadwell, refused to allow any public input, but did allow various proponents to stand a speak in support of the Metropolitan Orlando Economic Development Commission (MOEDC). I will write a longer overview of this hearing later this week, but here are the highlights.
The Board heard presentations from staff, the MOEDC (several staff were there from Orlando), and members of the EDAC (local County volunteer members of the Economic Development Advisory Commission).
The highlights were:
- that the presentations lacked any specific commitments to meet specific performance targets.
- Interim County Manager Sandy Minkoff said the recently signed agreement with the MOEDC was a "grant" and not a "performance based" contract, but the Board asked him to talk with the MOEDC and develop some performance criteria. This is a big change, since I have written previously about how poor the MOEDC agreement was that gave them $300,000 without any performance requirements. Now we will have to wait and see if any new "criteria" are acceptable in a businesslike environment.
- Jimmy Conner listened to Ralph Smith's Lake County Roundtable and this FiscalRangers author and initiated a proposal to discuss waiving Transportation Impact fees on new commercial development, and made the front page headline in the Daily Commercial today. Ralph and I had talked about that issue on last Wednesday's radio program, and I had announced it as a plank in my election campaign for County Commissioner for District 4. We are happy that Jimmy made the proposal and the rest of the board will consider it - the objective is to make it easier for new or relocating businesses to build facilities which will help employ local residents. You can't solve the residential vacancy problem without first creating a source for job growth.
- As mentioned above, Welton Cadwell prohibited public input, so no one asked the MOEDC to explain why they used bad data when citing new jobs created by their programs last year. Their data validity was exposed by Orlando Sentinel's Lauren Ritchie, and conveniently, no one asked them to explain why their data was so bad.
Upcoming Issues - County Board to "Approve" LPA Plan next week.
This is the 350+ page plan just issued by the County LPA committee, and only posted to the website this week. You can read more about one perspective of the plan from the blog, Right Side of the Lake HERE. My main issue is that, like Right Side says, the Board should allow 90-120 days for the public to read the final report before submission to the State, and they should NOT send the report next week with only one week to read it. Our local government should not behave like Democrats in Congress, who issue regulations without any time to read it.
More will be posted later in the week.
vj
Information provided by Cindy Barrow on School Board Decision regarding the "Race to the Top" Grant:
This
message is from Cindy Barrow, Lake County School Board Chair. This
message is NOT an official communication from the school board. This
message contains my thoughts and opinions. Please contact me at: [email protected]
Dear
Citizens:
Last
night our board made a very deliberative and thoughtful decision to become a
Local Education Area and sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to
participate in the "Race to the Top" Grant offered by the Federal
Government. Although the grant is a federal grant, it is
administered by the state and the MOU is a contract between the school board
and the State Department of Education. Florida is well positioned to
be a state that will be chosen to receive the federal grant monies given
the changes the state has already implemented to improve student
education. The reason that school boards were asked to sign
an MOU with the state is to gain points in the system that
the federal government uses to decide which states will be chosen to receive
the monies. The federal government wants to award the grant money to
states who have willing partnerships with their Departments of Education and
their Teacher's Unions.
Although
the decision to participate in the "Race to the Top"
grant appears to some to be an easy call given the fact that we have a
dearth of funding from the state, the decision was not so easy for our
board and for many other boards. School Boards across the
state have watched the Florida Department of Education make what some believe
are promises to school districts and then fail to follow through on verbal
commitments to school boards. For years we have watched new mandates and
rules be imposed upon school boards from Tallahassee without
the funding to implement the mandates.
In
addition to the above "trust issues", the grant is new and some
of the details have not been disclosed to school boards as the state is
still in the process of interpreting and/or receiving the information from the
Federal Government. In summary it is difficult for school boards
to sign on to a new government plan without the language in
a contract to support the verbal assurances offered from the Department of
Education.
It
is also difficult for school boards to sign an MOU without the support of their
local teacher's union. In the end, the Lake County School Board chose to
move forward and I applaud our brave decision and am thankful for 5-0 vote
on this topic. We have had a great relationship with our teachers and we
will do our best to write a plan with the assistance of our union
leadership. We will endeavor to write a plan that will be good for
our students and good for our teachers.
