Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Schools

Parents quiz schools chief on racial achievement gap

Passionate parents crowd the session to hear Clayton Wilcox discuss school issues.

By DONNA WINCHESTER
Published May 8, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - School superintendent Clayton Wilcox traveled south of Central Avenue for the second in a series of listening tours Wednesday and encountered an audience far different from the one that attended the first community meeting in Pinellas Park.

The predominantly African-American group that met at the Enoch Davis Center, 1111 18th Ave. S, was four times larger, focused and passionate.

Always respectful, the more than 130 audience members at times were not content to push buttons on the electronic listening devices Wilcox handed out to record their responses to a series of questions.

At the top of their list of concerns: the achievement gap between black and white students and whether the district is doing all it can to narrow it.

An audience member sitting with representatives from the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement started things off by asking why the School Board has chosen to hire a lawyer to contest a lawsuit brought four years ago by a black parent who charged the district with failing to educate black children.

A judge granted the case class action status last summer, which means it now represents all 21,000 black students in Pinellas.

Wilcox acknowledged that the district would defend itself, adding that it is "too bad" it has to do so since the money could have gone toward educating children. Stating that "Yesterday is just that," he reminded the group of his experience in working with diversity issues in his last school district and reiterated his priority to close the achievement gap.

From there, the questions came fast and furious. An elderly woman who is raising her granddaughter wanted to know how she can get resources to help the child succeed in school. A father wanted to know why his children have no books and no homework. A woman who identified herself as a grandmother and a community advocate said that while some children are "out of control," their teachers are, too.

"Teachers are supposed to look like teachers," she said. "Instead, they look like they're going to the grocery store or going out to play some basketball."

A woman who said Florida's governor would declare "a state of emergency" if white children were struggling at the same rate as black children drew the first of several rounds of applause.

Wilcox drew the second when he acknowledged that merely putting white children in the same classroom as black children "does not work magic."

"The way you improve education is by putting a high quality teacher in every classroom and delivering a high quality education over time for all students," he said. "The bottom line is, we have a long way to go."

Close to an hour into the 90-minute meeting, Lakewood High teacher Lorre Gifford pointedly asked Wilcox why he spent time with her students in the school's magnet program on a recent visit but did not stop in to see students in the traditional program.

"My students are not the students who need the help," she said, referring to Wilcox's plans to bring more wireless technology into their classroom.

Wilcox staunchly defended his decision to drop in on the magnet students, saying he wanted to visit a program he had heard a lot about.

A couple of the issues parents wanted to discuss had been brought up at the April 27 Pinellas Park listening tour. One mother expressed concerns about programs for special education students. Another asked how communication can be improved between schools and parents, especially at the middle school level.

A parent who asked about discipline of black students prompted Wilcox to refer to the "white elephant in the room," the recent case of a 5-year-old Fairmount Park Elementary student who was handcuffed by St. Petersburg police after she misbehaved in class.

"We will not introduce children to the juvenile justice system. . . . We have a responsibility to exhaust all possible resources before that," Wilcox said.

The meeting became tense when an audience member yelled out, "They hate our kids."

Wilcox said he did not believe that, saying that while there is "an awful lot of misunderstanding around big issues . . . teaching by and large is good."

When the superintendent directed their attention back to their listening devices to answer a multiple choice question about what they wanted most from the district, several parents called out, "All of the above." Repeated tries to get them to make a choice failed.

Responding to a question about whether it is important for children to attend racially and ethnically diverse schools, 58 percent said they thought it was very important. Eighty percent said they thought the district should allocate resources for schools that need them the most rather than spreading the money evenly across all schools.

Before the meeting ended, local minister Elder Martin Rainey drew applause when he pledged to work with Wilcox to find solutions to some of the problems that had been discussed.

"The education of children is not just up to the school system," he said.

Pinellas school superintendent Clayton Wilcox will conduct the third of four "listening tours" from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at Tarpon Springs Fundamental School, 400 E Harrison St. The tours have been designed to provide district officials with an opportunity to hear participants' views on Pinellas schools and to seek suggestions for community involvement. The final listening tour is scheduled from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at Paul B. Stephens Exceptional Education Center, 2935 County Road 193, Clearwater.

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