Parent groups plan rally outside state board meeting
A group of parents who think Florida spends too little money and imposes too many rules on public schools plan to protest Wednesday morning outside the Lakeland building where the State Board of Education is to meet.
The rally is aimed in part at Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, whom the state board appointed as Florida’s top education leader in December. Corcoran was a veteran state lawmaker and former speaker of the Florida House when, at Gov. Ron DeSantis’ suggestion, the board tapped the politician for the public education post.
“Take action! Rein in FL Ed Commissioner Richard Corcoran before it’s too late,” reads the online invitation to the “protest rally” at Polk State College’s Lakeland campus.
The parents planning the protest say the state is “starving public schools” and “expanding Commissioner Corcoran’s power.” They want to see better teacher pay, less state testing and fewer programs that send state money to private schools and consultants.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the board is to approve plans for six school districts, including those in Polk and Volusia counties, to hire “external operators” to help run their struggling schools. The schools are required to either hire outsiders, close the schools or turn them into charter schools — public schools run by private groups —under a state law Corcoran championed while in the Legislature.
“It’s just another way to take money out of the schools,” said Jennifer Sabin, a Polk County parent, explaining why she helped organize the event.
Sabin, who has three children in Polk schools and a husband who is a Polk teacher, said she is active in her local schools, but so many key decisions are made at the state level, by the Florida Legislature, the governor and then the state board.
She and others said it made
sense to attend the meeting, to showcase their displeasure and to let others in the community know what’s happening.
“For me as a parent, there are few ways for me to express my displeasure with what the state is doing,” Sabin said, adding that Florida’s policies “are not in the best interest of our children and our teachers and communities.”
Kathleen Oropeza, an Orlando mother who helped start the advocacy group Fund Education Now, said she has been watching state board meetings for years.
Corcoran’s treatment of Duval County’s school superintendent at the board’s May meeting spurred her to help plan the rally, she said.
“It was outrageous the way he addressed the superintendent,” she said, adding it made her and other advocates feel they needed to put the commissioner and the board “under a microscope.”
At that May meeting, Superintendent Diana Green, in the job for less than a year, discussed academic progress at two of her district’s most struggling schools, both of which have “turnaround plans” and already have hired outside consultants.
Corcoran angrily asked why her staff hadn’t turned the schools over to a proven charter school operator. “Are you afraid of that competition?” he asked, then added later, “I don’t understand why we don’t do something more dramatic.”’
He also said it was “criminal” that one Duval middle school had earned almost all Ds and Fs in the past decade.
Green said the local communities are proud of their schools, despite the problems, and don’t necessarily want an outside company running them. She also noted Duval has about 40 charter schools already operating with six more approved recently, so it is not opposed to that school choice option.
Both Oropeza and Sabin said they didn’t know how many people would make it to the rally, which is to start at 7 a.m. outside the college’s technology building, 3425 Winter Lake Road. The board is to meet in the building at 8 a.m.
“This is very much a wake-up call for people who want to see something different in public education,” Oropeza said.