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Schools

Advocates lament lack of education reports

A citizens group says that the district has not fulfilled promises to deliver reports on the status of black students.

By DONNA WINCHESTER
Published May 8, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - A citizens group tracking school quality is still waiting for documents it says the school district must provide to be in compliance with a federal court order.

Jim Madden, director of unitary status, had told the group on April 14 that he would obtain and make available before May 3 annual superintendent's reports on quality education beginning with 1999. The documents should reflect what the district has prescribed and implemented with respect to black student achievement, student discipline and assignment of students to classes and programs.

It was the most recent of many promises the district has made to Concerned Organizations for Quality Education for Black Students, co-chairman Vyrle Davis said at the group's meeting on Wednesday at the Enoch Davis Center.

But the deadline has come and gone - again.

Davis reminded the more than 60 people who attended the meeting that members of the group began meeting years ago to monitor the district's efforts to provide quality education for all students.

"Five years later, there is still no real information," Davis said. A bundle of documents the district recently presented to COQEBS was the same information it already had, he added.

Turning to Pinellas County School Board member Mary Brown, the group's guest speaker, Davis asked if the board ever discusses COQEBS' correspondence and its requests for information.

Brown said the board has had "no major discussions about it" but that she brings up the group's concerns in workshops relating to other issues.

A recent St. Petersburg Times story reported that the board is looking at plans for 2007. In that year, a federal requirement that Pinellas schools maintain a 42 percent ratio of African-American students will be lifted. Referring to that story, Davis remarked: "They'll be in for a rude awakening if, as an organization, we decide to go back to court."

In Brown's remarks to the group, she cited several areas where she sees a need for improvement: minority recruitment, technology programs for children who do not intend to go to college, and community involvement.

"Parents . . . don't know how to handle their children, so they send them to school for us to handle," she said. "More black children are coming to school very, very angry. . . . We as a community need to deal with that."

She also said she would like to see a minimum of seven weeks of new teacher training, a stronger commitment to education from local churches, and more attention paid to children who perform below the lowest achievement levels so they will stay interested in school.

"Children need to learn, that's the bottom line," she said. "They have got to be able to take care of themselves when they leave 12th grade."

COQEBS co-chairman Watson Haynes commented on a list of school discipline issues a subcommittee will review after the recent handcuffing of a 5-year-old student at Fairmount Park Elementary. Among those issues is the number of elementary and middle school students who have been arrested by race and school, district policy that triggers law enforcement involvement on a school campus, and efforts within the school system to implement countywide cultural training of school personnel.

The group's next meeting will be at 9:30 a.m. June 1 at the James Weldon Johnson Branch Library, 1059 18th Ave. S. The meeting will follow an optional $4 breakfast.

[Last modified May 8, 2005, 00:45:19]