Education

Families deal with choice plan misfires

Safiya Gordon, a 28-year-old nurse and mother of four, doesn't know why they call it "choice."

Last fall, believing in the promise of Pinellas County's school choice plan, she trekked to open houses, studied curriculums and considered school grades on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. She decided to select three schools instead of the five allowed.

She listed Maximo Elementary as her first choice and Bay Point Elementary second. The third escapes her memory.

Four kids. Three choices each. Twelve chances, theoretically, for the computer to match her with a school she liked. The result: zero choices granted for Gordon's children, Shandra, 4; Elias, 6; Eric, 8; and Dominique, 10.

"I called today to check on private school," Gordon, a single mother, said Friday. "I will do what I have to do to afford it."

Her children are among about 200 students who half-heartedly told the district this week they would accept one of a handful of second-tier "choices" available. They had landed in the unlucky "unplaced" category -- almost 1,300 kids who didn't get their choices and must settle for schools typically much farther from their neighborhoods. Officials have yet to reach all of the unplaced students but plan to by next week. Choice participants who didn't get one of those calls by Friday can probably assume the computer granted them a school they selected.

The calls must be completed before the district can assign spots for next school year to about 8,500 students who ignored appeals to participate in the choice program. When that task is completed, officials plan to send out letters notifying all parents where their children will go in August.

"We do not want to keep them in limbo any longer," said Jim Madden, the school official who oversees the choice plan. Notifying parents of unplaced students is a thankless process for the dozen or so officials who have had to make the calls this week. "First they're upset," director of student assignment Kathy Walker said of parents. "Then they have to vent for a long time. Then they start to listen. Then, acceptance -- reluctant acceptance."

More than half of the unplaced 1,300 are black students, many of whom already are bused out of their neighborhoods under the existing court-ordered system that expires at the end of the school year. Now they are needed again to help balance the racial quotas in the choice plan's first four years.

Many will continue to be bused when the choice program debuts in August as a system they were told would be better.

Gordon and other parents of unplaced students are being asked to make a decision as soon as possible, lest their options narrow further. Those who don't call back or decide on a backup school soon will roll the dice with the 8,500 who didn't participate: School officials will choose for them.

For Gordon, the pressured decision is yet another strike against choice. "That's not fair; that's not right," she said, adding that the district should allow time for the 6 percent of parents who were jilted to assess the schools available.

She hurriedly chose Clearview Avenue Elementary as a hedge against the possibility she won't have money for private school. Gordon lives on 16th Avenue S. Clearview is on 43rd Street N.

It is closer than Orange Grove Elementary, where her children are bused. However, Orange Grove received an A last year based on FCAT scores, while Clearview got a C.

"I have no idea about the school," she said of Clearview. Maximo or Bay Point -- her first choices -- would have been less than 10 minutes from her home. But Maximo's ratio of black students was over the limit even before the computer sort started, the result of current students who chose to remain at the school under the choice plan's "grandfathering" provisions. Grandfathering also left Bay Point with relatively few openings, according to the computer, which did not account for Gordon's biggest worry.

Her son, Elias, has asthma attacks that sometimes send him to the emergency room during the school day. Said Gordon: "I need him close."

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