The Escambia County School Board meets today at 11:30 a.m. to discuss its response to Charter School USA’s changes in the agreements regarding the operation of Warrington Middle School.
Why this matters: According to the Florida Board of Education, the school board must either sign a contract with Charter USA or close the low-performing middle school. The state Board of Education has scheduled an emergency meeting on Warrington Middle for next Tuesday.
For school board member Paul Fetsko, the sticking point is ensuring 200 spaces in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades for children living in the Warrington Middle attendance zone.
On WCOA this morning, Fetsko said, “What we are stuck on at this very moment is this. If there isn’t an attendance zone for the students who live in the Warrington district to be able to attend that school, then it doesn’t need to exist. We don’t need to have the students displaced to other schools.”
Education Commissioner Manny Diaz hasn’t happy with how the school board has handled the negotiations.
Fetsko: “I think that the State and the Commissioner want to leverage every bit of authority that they have, but we are constitutional officers. We weren’t appointed by anybody, we were elected by our constituents to serve our constituents.
“And so at one point in during the negotiation, a comment was made to me, ‘Well, we’ll close that school.’ And my comment was, ‘Go ahead,’ because in 17 years, we closed 14 schools in this district and students were better off after it happened. And so it’s not a threat.
” So as we look at whatever kind of forces are being used to dissuade us to do something, we are not going to do anything in a contract that is illegal, and we’re not going to do anything that we in our hearts know is not in the best interest of the students in this community.”
