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Positive changes for Pinellas

Since taking over as Pinellas school superintendent last fall, Clayton Wilcox has preached the importance of the classroom and the need to make schools friendlier to families. Now he's put some of his workforce where is mouth is.

Wilcox is reorganizing district staff in a way that will disperse more than 75 district headquarters employees to schools and local offices and put another 250 teacher/administrators back into the classroom for at least part of each school day. He also has taken significant steps toward making the district's confounding school choice assignment plan more manageable for families.

The reorganization plan brings some much-needed modernization to an organizational structure that hasn't changed appreciably in three decades. The geographic breakdown in supervision is replaced by administrators who will be responsible for individual levels of schooling - elementary, middle and high. Those new offices will have their own curriculum and instructional analysts, and Wilcox says he intends for them to respond directly to classroom needs, including providing instructional teams for struggling schools.

With choice, the district will move the fall deadline for applications to the spring, allowing families more time to make their decisions each year. The paperwork requirements also have been streamlined, and many families will be able to avoid applications altogether.

Both changes speak well of the superintendent's priorities.

[Last modified June 22, 2005, 01:08:17]