(Recap and analysis of the week in state government)
By BRANDON LARRABEE
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
Whether it’s the kind given to students in school or the kind that can detect a disease creeping into the state, tests helped drive the week in Florida.
Tests for Zika continued to provide more troublesome headlines for state officials — and for the tourism industry that needs a flow of positive stories — in the form of a second area where the virus is believed to have been transmitted by mosquitoes. That came even as a state economist suggested the fallout from the disease was already likely to take a bite out of state revenues.
Meanwhile, a legal battle continued over whether students should be required to take a standardized test before being allowed to move from third to fourth grade. An effort to draw in the federal courts was knocked away as both sides prepared for a showdown next week.
And the University of West Florida began the process of testing the resumes of potential presidents for the institution, including one who is a familiar face to the region and to those in Tallahassee who follow state government.
“Only a test?” Hardly. This week, tests were what seemed to matter the most.
MIAMI GETS HOTTER
Generally, something being “hot” in South Florida would be a good thing — a reference to the party scene or, well, other kinds of scenery. But when Miami Beach is the second hot spot for Zika, the term becomes something more concerning for public health and the economy.
Officials confirmed Friday that a new location was identified in Miami-Dade County where Zika is originating, and five more people have tested positive for the disease. Perhaps the most worrying number for those looking at the business angle: Three of those who tested positive were tourists.
There have now been 36 confirmed cases of people getting infected in the state, with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanding a travel advisory for pregnant women to include an area in Miami Beach.
Gov. Rick Scott and state health officials had previously said local transmission of the disease was only occurring in Miami’s Wynwood community. But with the virus also now being found in part of Miami Beach, Scott announced Friday he has requested additional resources from the CDC.
“We have a safe state, and we’re going to keep it that way,” Scott said.
Among the people who recently tested positive were visitors from New York, Texas and Taiwan. Scott also held separate conference calls Friday with Miami-Dade elected officials, state university presidents and state college presidents.
The new zone in Miami Beach, where the transmissions are believed to have occurred, is between 8th Street and 28th Street, between the beach and the Intracoastal Waterway.
The announcement followed a drip-drip-drip of new Zika diagnoses throughout the week, some of them travel-related and some of them transmitted locally. Even economists trying to forecast state revenues said the virus was likely to have some impact on their work in the weeks ahead.
Amy Baker, coordinator of the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research, told reporters that Zika will serve as a “black swan” in a proposed, annual three-year outlook for the state budget that lawmakers are required to approve each year. Black swans are generally events that have a low likelihood of occurring but would have a large impact on the state budget if they do.
But the likelihood of some impact from the disease really wasn’t in much doubt.
“It’s not that I don’t think Zika will be a factor. … It’s because we don’t know exactly how it’s going to unfold at this moment in time, and when,” Baker said.
OVER TO YOU
A case about Florida’s rules on whether third-grade students are allowed to move to fourth grade was in federal court for a brief period this week, a timeframe that was essentially just long enough for a judge to knock it back to a Leon County judge.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker told attorneys he was returning the case to the state courts following a decision by parents to drop federal claims in the lawsuit. The Florida Department of Education and six school districts had argued that federal equal-rights and due-process claims in the lawsuit meant that the federal courts were the appropriate place to handle the issue.
But the parents challenging the way the state determines who is held back in third grade dropped the federal counts, and Walker decided to return the dispute to Leon County Circuit Judge Karen Gievers. In turn, Gievers’ office again scheduled a Monday morning hearing that had been put on hold by the federal intervention.
At the center of the case is a battle over whether students can “opt out” of the Florida Standards Assessment for third grade, which is generally used to help decide whether a child can move up to the fourth grade.
Parents who filed the lawsuit believe state law gives them the right to tell their children not to answer questions on the standardized test. But while the law spells out ways to advance that don’t require passing the assessment, the Florida Department of Education and school districts say that doesn’t give students the opportunity to refuse to take it.
Both sides argued that they weren’t “forum shopping,” a legal term about looking for the most favorable court possible, despite the fact that most observers think Gievers sympathizes with the families and not the Department of Education or the districts.
“I don’t think it can be said that there’s forum shopping going on, because it’s not all clear whether one forum is preferable over the other. … What we’re trying to do is keep on the expedited track that’s been set in state court, because this is an issue of children and where they’ll be placed in this school year,” said attorney Andrea Mogensen, who represents the families.
The state and the school districts involved — Broward, Hernando, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Pasco counties — likewise denied that they were trying to delay a ruling by Gievers.
Meanwhile, the school year pushed on, even as some students continued waiting on the courts to decide whether they belong in the third grade or the fourth.
‘MY UNIVERSITY’
There’s nothing new about Florida politicians being in the running to operate state institutions of higher education. Former House Speaker and state Sen. John Thrasher is the top man at Florida State University. The University of North Florida is run by John Delaney, a former mayor of Jacksonville.
Now, outgoing state Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican and former Senate president, is looking to be the next elected official turned member of academia. The lawmaker, whose vocabulary would likely break the SAT scale, is among 19 candidates who will be invited to the next step in the interview process to become president of the University of West Florida.
Gaetz, a former Okaloosa County schools superintendent, was among 83 people who applied for the position. Also among the 19 candidates is Martha Saunders, who has been the provost and executive vice president at the Pensacola university since 2013. Saunders previously served as president at the University of Southern Mississippi and as chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
After controversy about the selection of his former colleague Thrasher at Florida State, Gaetz is trying to make sure the appearances are on the up-and-up. He said he is “not a looking for a job” and has neither lobbied nor asked anyone to nominate him because it would be “unseemly.”
But he made his affection for “my university” clear, and cited his longtime association with the school, which serves about 13,000 students. Over the past 15 years, Gaetz said he has worked closely with faculty, administrators and trustees to create career technical and STEM education programs.
He said he has helped the school secure some $90 million in campus projects, improve its endowment opportunities and create an economic-development fund that has helped generate about 7,000 jobs.
“I’m not on the career path from dean to provost to president. I don’t believe I’m due any reward for past services. And I’m not interested in any other job in education,” Gaetz said.
In an interview last week, state university system Chancellor Marshall Criser III, who came to the academic world after being a corporate executive, cited several characteristics that make a successful university leader.
“They ought to be a dynamic personality who can communicate well with their stakeholders,” he said. “They need to understand how to run and operate a complex organization. And they need to be sensitive as to how an academic enterprise functions and what some of the relationships are that are embedded in academics.”
A University of West Florida presidential search committee will invite the remaining candidates to appear for face-to-face meetings on Aug. 29 and 30. The committee expects to approve a list of three finalists on Sept. 6, and the school’s Board of Trustees will select the replacement for retiring President Judy Bense on Sept. 15.
STORY OF THE WEEK: The spread of Zika continued, this time with a second hot spot being discovered in Miami-Dade County.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “It wasn’t a cemetery. It was a damn dump site.”— Bob Baxter, a Gainesville resident who was at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys from 1950 to 1951, arguing against returning to the Jackson County site the remains of dozens of boys who were victims of beatings and abuse at the school.
