Judy's Journal

Article Submitted By: Judith Stein

As school came to a close for 2007-08 and is just beginning for 2008-09, there are many things to be proud of and some to dismay. We are pleased to finally receive our funding in April of 2008.  Florida Department of Education (FDOE) was funded as one of three grants in the State of Florida (Miami-Dade and Hillsborough counties also were funded) among only fourteen grants in the nation under the Voluntary Public School Choice (VPSC) program.

We are pleased to continue our work for school choice and educational options in Florida. Nova Southeastern University, Fischler School of Education and Human Services (FSEHS) has provided the home of initiatives for school choice through the National Institute of Educational Options (NIEO), which has been part of the FGSEHS since 1998. This is our tenth anniversary.

Our Florida School Choice Resource Center was developed under the 2002-2007 Voluntary Public School Choice grant (VPSC) from the United States Department of Education, which was provided to the State of Florida in the 2002-2003 school year to expand, reinstate or improve school choice in Florida. With the new grant for 2007-2012, we can expand the reach of our Parent Resource Centers, beyond Miami-Dade and Broward and Jacksonville and Orlando, with the local school systems and the community organizations.      

Now we can expand to Bay County, Gadsden and add to the work in Jacksonville, as well as Palm Beach and the Seminole Reservation in Glades County in the following years. We are working with the Office of Independent Education and Parental Choice which is led by Yolanda Miranda-Hill, the VPSCC Manager. She will be implementing the three models of inter district choice with Palm Beach, Polk and nine districts and Hillsborough. They have all come up with different models and will begin in this year before September 2008.

This two-million dollar per year grant to the FDOE has a large sub grant to Nova Southeastern University, Fischler School of Education and Human Services. The state piece was to develop a competition for “inter district choice” to enhance and expand it in Florida and the NSU-FSEHS portion is to further the original Parent Resource Centers and to develop new Parent Resource Centers in Tallahassee, Palm Beach, Bay and Gadsden counties and on the Seminole Reservation in Glades/Okeechobee County.   

We can also update you on the progress of the Florida Public School Choice Consortium (FPSCC), which began in 2003 and is an extension of the organization which Maryellen Elia (now Superintendent in Hillsborough County) started in Florida in the 1990’s to network for school choice in Florida. The new President is Kathy Israelson of Bay County who is a leader in choice from her mentor work in the first FDOE VPSCC grant in 2002. She has taken her place as President and now follows Connie Scothel-Gross of Palm Beach County.

The FPSCC began the 2007-2008 school year with a state wide conference in October at the School Reform Conference in Orlando and then a meeting of the Central region in January 31, 2008 as well as the meeting of the North region in Tallahassee at the Career Academies on The Hill Conference on April 15-17, 2008 and will end with the presentation of the Dr. Carlo Rodriguez Champion of school. Choice awards on June 17th at the State Board of Education meeting in Tampa.

Dr. Rodriguez was the State of Florida Executive Director of School Choice whose untimely death took away a visionary in school choice. Nova Southeastern University has provided two scholarships for masters and doctorate so that the Champion for School Choice awards for the year 2008 will include a half scholarship each year for further education in an area of school choice.    

In the 2008 year, Nova also provided “seed monies” for the Southeast Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), which is at the Tampa campus for  Nova Southeastern University. Our consultant and administrator in Tampa, Kathy Harris, is one of the national consultants for this organization. For more information, see www.southeastces.org and www.essentialschools.org. Kathy will be working with magnet schools this year as well as the Smaller Learning Communities grants. 

You will hear about the new developments of the new Parent Resource Centers from our new Project Manager for the FDOE VPSC grant, Katy Twist-Harty.    

Finally, an important development is the collaboration between the Florida Public School Choice Consortium (FPSCC), a non profit for school choice in Florida, and the new Florida Association of Charter School Authorizers (FACSA) with its two Presidents—Kathy Israelson of Bay County for the FPSCC and Carolyn Finch of Polk County for the FACSA. We will meet together, when possible, share our web site and eNewsletter and continue to support quality school choice.

Read our eNewsletter and learn about the conferences and institutes of our partner organizations, the Magnet Schools of America, the National Career Academy Coalition, the Southeast Coalition of Essential Schools and the Small Schools Workshop, as well as our own Florida Public School Choice Consortium and Florida Association of Charter School Authorizers and thanks to new articles, learn what our schools are doing in the State under the No Child Left Behind law.

We hope to see you in the fall at our State wide FPSCC Conference before the annual Charter School Conference in November.

If you have articles for our newsletter, contact our Logistics Coordinator, Carla McMullen at carlajon@gate.net to assist you in learning more about how school choice helps educators, parents and students with school climate; security; student achievement and educational

Judith S. Stein Ed.D.
Principal Investigator/Project Director
Florida School Choice Resource Center--
State of Florida VSCP grant of the USDOE
and Executive Director of the National Institute of
Educational Options (NIEO), Nova Southeastern University, Fischler School of Education of Human Services