Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The Jefferson County School District continues its faltering steps to reclaim the schools in 2022, with apparent little guidance from the Florida Department of Education (FDOE).
That, at least, is the impression one gets from the latest update that School Superintendent Eydie Tricquet gave the school board last week relative to the transition.
Tricquet began her presentation by telling the Jefferson County School Board on Monday evening, Sept. 13, that she didn’t have much new information to report on the transition.
She then informed the board of a workshop set for 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, to come up with a five-year strategic plan and a budget, which she said were necessary steps to reclaim the schools and get the district out from under FDOE oversight.
“With the strategic plan we need to line up our goals and decide where we want to go,” Tricquet said.
FDOE representatives, she said, would attend Monday’s workshop and provide the board with more information on the transition.
Her point was that the district needed to take the initiative and come up with a plan of operation and a budget to show the FDOE that the district was capable of doing for itself and taking back the schools in 2022. The FDOE, she suggested, was itself at a loss as to how to handle the transition, as the agency had never dealt with a like situation, Jefferson County being the only school district in the state operated by a charter school.
Tricquet said she was tired of waiting. She had been waiting for seven months and nothing had happened. She wanted the district to take charge and take back the schools, she said.
Tricquet informed the school board that the FDOE needed the strategic plan and budget by mid October, when it planned to present both to the Florida State Board of Education.
“The FDOE wants to see a budget and a plan to go forward,” she said. “But the FDOE can’t tell me what they need because this has never happened before.”
The School Board members expressed surprise that the FDOE was going before the state board as soon as October when the department hadn’t communicated with the board since August 9. At that time, a high-level team from the FDOE told the board and superintendent that it would be working with the district on the transition and would keep the board abreast of any and all progress.
School Board Chairman Charles Boland expressed doubts about the short deadline for development of the plan.
“I don’t think we can come up with a strategic plan on Sept. 27,” Boland said.
It would be better, he said, if the FDOE proposed a plan and the school board then decided if it could live with it.
Part of the problem, Boland said, was the school board couldn’t get information from Somerset, whereas the FDOE could.
School Board Shirley Washington agreed that the September workshop wouldn’t allow enough time for development of a plan by the October deadline. If the FDOE wasn’t going to help the district develop a plan, contrary to its earlier indication, it should have stated so upfront so that the district could have hired a consultant, she said.
“I don’t understand how we’re going to come up with a plan at a workshop on Sept. 27 if the FDOE is going to the state education board in October,” Washington said. “We don’t have enough time. We should have been having workshops all along.”
School Board Member Bill Brumfield concurred.
“I’m with Mrs. Washington,” he said. “I’m confused. The FDOE hasn’t given us anything to go on.”
School Board Member Sandra Saunders evinced frustration.
“We know how the FDOE and state board works,” she said, referring to the hearings several years ago when board lost control of the district. “They didn’t work with us. They came before us and talked and then they never came back. We don’t have 100 percent confidence in the FDOE with what happened the last time.”
Developing a strategic plan required a lot of work, she said. It wasn’t something that the district could do over a few weeks.
“It’s like they’re going to do it to us again,” Saunders said, referring to the FDOE.
Said Brumfield, “You go to these meetings and you think that everything is all right, and then they embarrass you.”
Washington noted that she and School Board Member Gladys Roann-Watson had attended the earlier state board meeting and she had actually cried, she had been so upset with the way that the district had been treated at the hearing.
“I refuse to go through this kind of thing again,” Washington said. “We’re not the kind of people that they presented to the state board.”
Although she and Roann-Watson had had reservations about going to the hearing, they had believed that the FDOE would support the district, Washington said. But instead, the FDOE had thrown the district under the bus.
Saunders reminded the board that when she had pressed Chancellor Jacob Oliva on Aug. 9 about the possibility of an oversight committee monitoring the district after the transition, the chancellor had conceded that it was a possibility. If it was going to be an oversight committee, the chancellor should state it up front and not play games, she said.
Tricquet said it was because she didn’t want an oversight committee that she was so adamant about proceeding with the strategic plan and budget to put the district in a better bargaining position. She had already, she said, been working on the strategy plan since February.
She further informed the board that after interviewing several candidates for the position of director of operations and submitting the results to the FDOE for the selection of one of the individuals, the FDOE had killed the idea at the last minute. Which was the reason why she had cancelled an earlier scheduled board meeting at the last minute, she said. She hadn’t seen any point in proceeding with the board meeting when the director of operations job was no longer on the table, she said.
Tricquet grew visibly upset as the board members continued questioning the purpose and viability of the workshop, with the superintendent’s responses growing shorter and sharper.
The board members tried to assure Tricquet that their frustration was not with her, but rather with the FDOE. Even so, Saunders and Washington said they were certain that posts would appear on Facebook falsely claiming that the board had attacked the superintendent and continued to cause general upheaval in the district.
But their point, they said, was to solicit information. And if the superintendent herself was confused and frustrated by the FDOE’s lack of direction and information, how else could the board react?
“We’re frustrated,” Washington said. “What we need to do is hold a meeting with the FDOE, and if they’re not going to do anything, we need to know that.”