David Bear is tired of the Escambia County School Board’s delays in signing an agreement for Charter Schools USA to take over Warrington Middle School. He and ret. Capt. Tim Kinsella, former head of NAS Pensacola, have spoken at school board meetings. Bear has visited the middle school and met with Charter Schools USA officials.
“The Escambia County School Board has just been kicking this thing down the road for years now,” Bear said on WCOA’s “Real News with Rick Outzen” this morning. “They were ordered by the state to do this turnaround plan, and they have failed to turn it around. They’re still a D school. And so they were ordered by the State Board of Education to convert to a charter or close it down. We are just a couple days before the deadline, and they don’t have a contract.”
School board members have signed the latest proposed agreement had several demands that they consider non-negotiables, including turning the school into K-12 academy with open enrollment that wouldn’t necessarily students in the WMS attendance zone.
Last week, the Florida Board of Education listed to Superintendent Tim Smith and Board chairman Paul Fetsko and were interested in the district’s non-negotiables.
“The lack of sense of urgency is a major problem,” said Bear. “We’ve got these families that we’ve already been failing for years, and we’re just going to let the school shut down if we don’t meet the deadline for this agreement. And those children in this D school are going to be spread among the other middle schools, and it’s going bring the grades down for the rest of those public schools. And busing to other school will only work if the school district has enough CDL bus drivers to actually get ’em to those other schools.”
He said he has toured WMS and found the conditions deplorable. “The school district hasn’t spent any money on the, cleanup or painting of the building. I mean, it’s just a depressing place to go to school and to go to work.”
Bear has met with Charter Schools USA officials. “They were concerned about children. They were excited about the opportunity. They have experience in turning around these schools and want to create some specific programs to provide opportunity and hope for these kids.”
He added, “The Charte Schools USA want to get it cleaned up and try to make it a better environment for everyone, for a better learning environment, a safe place. They’re excited about the opportunity, but they’re just waiting on the school district to get off the pot and make a decision.”
The school board has an emergency meeting scheduled for 8 a.m. tomorrow to make its decision on WMS’s fate.
