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Updated: Jun 19th, 2005 - 20:05:13 |
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| Jim Toner |
Nothing in recent Seminole County history has come close to creating the furor that erupted when the School Board tried to set in concrete a high-school rezoning plan affecting up to 5,000 students.
Tried is the correct word, because angry parents managed to get the plan before a state administrative judge before it could be implemented. The parents argued the board violated its own policies in pushing the plan through.
School rezonings are always highly emotional events. After all, they cause disruptions to family life and to the aspirations of parents for their children.
This one, though, has created a particularly powerful stink. If stinks were rated on a Saffir-Simpson scale like hurricanes, the current turmoil over Seminole's schools would be a Category 5 stink.
I have the e-mails, the phone mails and the scorched ears to prove it because this column stepped into the fray a couple of weeks of go. Just got an angry call last week, as a matter of fact.
Essentially, the column sympathized with the plight of the affected parents, but concluded that rezoning is one of the more unpleasant prices you pay for growth. It said in the end that acceptance was best, along with the realization that you are your child's prime motivator.
The debate also has been irksome because upset Lake Brantley parents have been teeing off on Lyman High, the proposed destination for their kids under the rezoning. Lyman was painted as an academic dead end -- an unfair and unjust assessment. Lyman has plenty of first-rate students, and the Greyhound tradition runs deep in Seminole County.
Now that that is off my chest, my sympathy is growing for the aggrieved parents, largely because of what unfolded during marathon hearings a week ago.
The process smacked of a charade. That argument got a big boost from Dianne Kramer, former deputy superintendent of schools, who recently resigned for "personal and professional reasons."
The hearing revealed that she had e-mailed the board in October, saying, "It is not fair to anyone to step in at the end and change the way things are done." When the school system lost Kramer, it lost one of its sharpest administrators. She could have been superintendent but lacked the formal credentials academia prizes.
The sensitive issue of rezoning started off correctly with an avenue for parent input and an independent committee to evaluate recommendations and present the best, and least painful, ones to the School Board. In the end, all of this work was dumped and the School Board adopted plans "quickly" developed by the office of Superintendent Bill Vogel.
Vogel argued that consultation with an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice led to changing the plans to better meet federal desegregation or, as they call them now, diversity requirements. Those requirements, along with other factors, such as the extent of overcrowding at the targeted schools, are a matter of dispute. I guess it is the job of the administrative judge to decide, at least partly, who is right.
But the process should be transparent.
For too long, Seminole's School Board and its appointed superintendent seem to have moved in lock step.
Perhaps it's time to elect a superintendent.
Seminole County Watch.com
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