The Escambia County School District has five D schools and four F schools. The two troubled middle schools have solutions.
The state ordered the District to turn over Warrington Middle to Charter Schools USA, and Bellview Middle has been accepted into the Community Partnership School program, which will bring Children’s Home Society, Community Health Northwest Florida, and UWF to the rescue.
But what about the nine elementary schools? The top five elementary schools – Pensacola Beach (charter), N.B. Cook, Cordova Park, and A.K. Suter- had top points ranging from 240 to 211.
The bottom five schools?
Points | |
BRENTWOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 94 |
O. J. SEMMES ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 90 |
ENSLEY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 87 |
GLOBAL LEARNING ACADEMY | 64 |
MONTCLAIR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | 60 |
WARRINGTON ELEMENTARY | 51 |
LINCOLN PARK ELEMENTARY | 43 |
Only three elementary schools in the entire state earned fewer total points than Lincoln Park – The Collaboratory Preparatory Academy (Hillsborough), San Jose Primary School (Duval) And Just Elementary School (Hillsborough).
Warrington Elementary is in the Bottom 10 (#9), and Montclair is in the Bottom #20 (#19) Global Learning #25. Florida has 1809 elementary schools.
Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Times reports the Hillsborough County School Board is upset that it has six D schools and one F. They don’t excuse the grades; they consider them a call to action.
Hillsborough Superintendent Van Ayre told his board: “I own it. My team owns it. My goal is to not have any D’s or F’s. That’s one metric that you can hold me accountable to. This is where we are right now. That’s a fact. We own these.”
How will Kevin Adams, Paul Fesko, David Williams, Patty Hightower, and Bill Slayton deal with these dire grades?
Will the Escambia Children’s Trust help? Which of the 16 out-of-school time programs it’s funding ($4.7 million of taxpayers’ dollars) for another year will make the biggest impact?
George,
UDC should have thought of that. They should have done their research to see if there was a demand for the program in Century and ended up over-promising and under-delivering. And the taxpayers are out of nearly $200,000. Several providers are finding that after-school programs have trouble reaching attendance goals unless they are done at or near the schools or the kids’ homes. – Rick. PS ECT staff and the grants committee did a pitiful job screening the grant applications.
With all the consternation surrounding the UDC Youth First program in Century, why can’t that program be moved to these targeted schools in Pensacola? There is no question the program was operating and serving he children that did participate. the issue was non-participation. However as shown in these statistics, Escambia children need the supportive learning environments like the individual tutoring, computer access and mentoring that Youth First provided. If the program had served 200 or more children there would be no complaints. The reality is there are far more than 200 children that would love to participate within the inner-city schools listed herein.