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Schools

Year was a rotten apple

Four hurricanes. The arrest of a 5-year-old. Students hit by cars. New leadership. This was a school year that's not likely to be missed.

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published May 15, 2005

	[Times photo: Ken Helle]
	Aug. 14 to Sept. 27 -- Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne hit Florida. Six school days are lost.
	Oct. 8 -- Rebecca McKinney, a 16-year-old student at Clearwater High, is hit crossing McMullen-Booth Road after a Pinellas school bus drops her at a stop that violates a district directive. Her death leads to a shakeup of the district's Transportation Department.
	[Times photo: Michael Rondou]
	Nov. 1 -- After a two-month transition, school superintendent Clayton Wilcox takes over the Pinellas district. He begins making major changes.
	Feb. 11 -- Brooke Ingoldsby, an 8-year-old student at James B. Sanderlin Elementary, is struck and killed crossing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street after a substitute bus driver dropped her off on the wrong side of the street. Officials later discover the driver lied about the chain of events that led to the accident.
	[From videotape]
	March 14 -- A 5-year-old kindergartener at Fairmount Park Elementary is handcuffed by St. Petersburg police after throwing an extended tantrum. A month later, a video of the incident is released, landing on news shows across the world.
	[Times photo: John Pendgraft]
	March 28 -- The district is forced to relocate 600 children from Cross Bayou Elementary in Pinellas Park because of concerns about the throngs of protesters outside Terri Schiavo's hospice. They return nine days later after Schiavo dies.
	April 4 -- Patrick Oliver, a 5-year-old kindergartener at Lakewood Elementary decides not to board his afterschool shuttle to the local YMCA and walks 2 miles home, crossing many intersections.
	April 12 -- E'Traveon Johnson, a 6-year-old kindergartener at Fairmount Park Elementary, runs from school and is hit by a car. He remains in critical condition.

ST. PETERSBURG - The day before he left Louisiana in August to become Pinellas County's school superintendent, Clayton Wilcox's dog died.

Things went downhill from there.

The 2004-05 Pinellas school year comes to a close Tuesday - mercifully, some would say - after four hurricanes, two student deaths from bus-related accidents, the videotaped handcuffing of a 5-year-old girl that made international news, the sad tale of a runaway kindergartener struck by a car, plus assorted other misadventures.

The bad karma continued right up through Friday with allegations that a 12-year-old girl at Carwise Middle School was groped in front of classmates while their teacher was out of the room. Some students did nothing and were said to be laughing. A 15-year old boy was arrested.

"People, I think, have really just had enough," said School Board member Jane Gallucci. "I can't remember a year with this much packed into it."

Wilcox's first year has been a mixture of crisis management and the more gradual anxiety of an incoming chief executive pressing to change an organization's culture.

The new superintendent has held news conferences to discuss the fate of dead or injured children. He has faced anxious crowds of parents and bus drivers. He has fired or suspended several employees and ordered a major reorganization of the district's transportation department. All on top of the usual grind of staff, community and School Board meetings.

One of the year's low points: a moment at the April 13 news conference on E'Traveon Johnson, the 6-year-old St. Petersburg boy who ran from Fairmount Park Elementary and was hit by a car. Wilcox's voice cracked as he acknowledged the mounting toll of so many tragedies. "This has become all too sad for us," he said.

The boy remains in critical condition at All Children's Hospital.

As many as five major lawsuits are said to be on the way as a result of the year's events, most with big-name attorneys taking aim at what they say are systemic flaws within the nation's 22nd largest school district.

Even the Rev. Jesse Jackson flew in last week to tell the district how it could improve.

In interviews Friday, neither of Wilcox's two immediate predecessors - Scott Rose and Howard Hinesley - could recall a year more fraught with the kind of blowups that keep superintendents awake at night.

Together, their experience spans from 1981 to 2004.

"I would say Dr. Wilcox is fortunate to be superintendent of Pinellas County because I think it's still one of the best school districts in the nation," Rose said. "But it's unfortunate he came at a time when all of this happened. . . . I'm hoping that he won't think that's always what happens in Pinellas County."

In addition to a series of sudden emergencies, the year will be remembered for a handful of other stresses on the system.

Classes started Aug. 3 with a controversial new teaching system in place at Pinellas elementary schools. Teachers were required to test students more frequently, using the results to shore up weaknesses and fill gaps in knowledge. More than ever, the curriculum was aligned to material on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, and it had to be taught at a faster pace.

Teachers rebelled, saying the new system impinged on their personal classroom style and denied students access to knowledge beyond the test.

Months later, right in the middle of FCAT testing, the Terri Schiavo case boiled over. Scores of protesters flocked to her Pinellas Park hospice, which is next door to Cross Bayou Elementary. The scene was so unstable the district moved the school's 600 students to other locations until after Schiavo died.

By then, the now-famous 5-year-old had been arrested by St. Petersburg police at Fairmount Park Elementary. However, it was a video of the incident released weeks later that would spark a robust national debate on child discipline.

Earlier in the year, high school sophomore Rebecca McKinney and third-grader Brooke Ingoldsby were struck and killed on busy roads after school buses dropped them off at improper locations.

Wilcox responded to both deaths by admitting where the district erred.

He started the year helping Hinesley manage fallout from the four hurricanes that crisscrossed Florida, then took over as superintendent on Nov. 1.

Reflecting last week on his baptism of fire, he seemed dazed.

"Sometimes people are in accidents and they can't remember a lot of the events," Wilcox said. "Either I'm getting Alzheimer's or I have a bit of that, because it's very hard for me right now to put it all back in sequence. . . . We've jumped from one thing to the next, and for the first time in my life I've not had the time to go back and reflect on how did I do that, what went on."

Wilcox said he and his wife, Julie, have talked in recent days about the year and how it started with their own chain of personal troubles.

Julie Wilcox's father died after a long battle with cancer as the family was completing its move to Pinellas from Baton Rouge, La. A short time later, the couple's daughter, Morgann, was hospitalized with pneumonia.

"Here I'm starting my new job sleeping on a couch in the hospital," he said. "It was crazy."

The day before he left Baton Rouge, the family's aging golden retriever, Bailey, had to be euthanized.

Wilcox and the district have come through the crises while also managing to stay on track with other initiatives, said School Board member Linda Lerner. For example, the problems have not prevented the district from starting an overhaul of the school choice system or making changes that so far have led to improved FCAT scores, she said.

Lerner said she has been comforted as she travels to year-end events such as concerts and award ceremonies throughout the district. They remind her, she said, of the thousands of small successes that occurred in Pinellas schools amid the awful headlines.

"We are a very good school system," Lerner said. "I've gotten in touch with that."

Said Wilcox: "People are kind of judging my first eight months here by how we've weathered the disasters. . . . But in spite all of the craziness, we maintained some level of stability in the schools and perhaps deflected some of the pressure from them."

He also acknowledged that tough times have allowed many of the district's top staff members to gel after some early resistance from employees still mourning the departure of Hinesley, who retired after 14 years as superintendent.

"If there is an upside to any of this, it's that I absolutely know who the people are that I want to go forward with, because some people have just stood up tall and done great things," Wilcox said of his staff. "And I think that they've now seen me do things. So I'm pretty sure the people around me are not the people who are saying, "I wish the other guy was still here."'

[Last modified May 15, 2005, 01:20:21]