Having become the fourth school district in Florida to approve a collegiate high school for academically motivated students, Pinellas is now offering a peculiar message to some who might apply this fall:
Don't.
This form of schizophrenia derives, apparently, from some educational rivalry and some arduous bureaucratic calisthenics. A high school magnet program coordinator complained that some of his students were applying to the new school, prompting district administrators to plunge into their rulebooks. An old policy, not currently applicable to choice assignment and certainly not relevant to the first charter high school ever approved, was said to require that magnet students give up their seats if they apply to another magnet. So John Bowen, School Board attorney and guardian of old policies, rendered this rule as somehow applicable to St. Petersburg College's new charter high school, a school that offers students the potential to graduate with a cost-free two-year associate's degree.
In explaining why students must be removed from their magnet programs if they dare apply to the collegiate school, Bowen provided a moment of jarring bureaucratic clarity: "The district does not want a student to just temporarily hold a seat in a magnet until another more desirable opportunity comes along."
Is this for real? Pinellas schools, as a matter of official policy, want to prevent students from seeking desirable opportunities?
This new charter school may in fact pose some logistical challenges for high school magnets, in part because the charter serves only 10th through 12th grade and ambitious students enroll in magnet programs in 9th grade. It also doesn't help that Pinellas clings to an application deadline, Nov. 1, that is three to five months earlier than every other choice district in Florida. But these are soluble conflicts, particularly with a new school that will enroll no more than 150 students this fall. The solution just takes educators who are willing to rise above intramural politics and consider what is best for students. St. Petersburg College is not the enemy here.
Given the apparent popularity of this new collegiate school, a lottery may decide which students get in. As a result, the district's ultimatum to magnet students and their families in this first year is remarkably callous. Is it not apparent to Bowen or superintendent Howard Hinesley how petty and insecure this makes them look? Why would the School Board approve a new school and then discourage students from applying to it?
