State: Daunting job awaits new education board

The seven members of Florida's new Board of Education say they bring no grand design for the state's education future to their first meeting today. "You can't suggest solutions until you have identified the problems," says board member William Proctor, longtime president of Flagler College, a small, private school in St. Augustine. "The only thing I can say with certainty is that we are entering a period of major adjustment."

Exactly how major should become clear very soon.

One of the board's first tasks is to rewrite Florida's school code. That may seem hopelessly arcane, even boring. But the code includes almost every law governing Florida's schools, colleges and universities.

How and why can teachers be fired? It's in the school code.

How do universities admit students? It's in the school code.

Should Florida schools be required to teach about the Holocaust, African-American history and the benefits of sexual abstinence?

The school code says they are, along with lessons about flag education, kindness to animals and the elementary principles of agriculture.

Rewriting the school code is a lot like rewriting the operating system that runs your computer; change that software and you change how your computer works in ways big and small.

But will this rewrite be big or small?

"I expect this to be substantive," says Phil Handy, the board's chairman and one of the primary architects of Florida's new K-20 education system. "We're talking about everything from facilities to the way business is conducted in the classroom. Budgeting. Everything."

Jim Horne, the state's new education secretary, agrees.

"I think there's a sense that we need a comprehensive rewrite," he says.

It will have to be done quickly; the deadline for board action is January. Horne already has appointed a 15-member work group that began poring over the code last week.

The group includes members of all the traditional constituencies: the director of the Florida School Boards Association; attorneys from the Department of Education and the community colleges; lobbyists for the university system.

But it also includes representatives from groups that don't usually get a seat at the table. One member is an outspoken advocate for vouchers and school choice. Another lobbies for Florida's private and independent schools.

Whatever the Board of Education recommends will ultimately end up before state lawmakers. What they will approve is anyone's guess.

But Handy and Horne keep using a quirky but revealing buzzword: devolution. It represents their desire to push decision-making from the state to the most local level possible.

For those it would affect most -- the superintendents, school board members, university trustees and presidents who would find themselves suddenly empowered -- devolution is a cause for both excitement and dread.

"For years superintendents and school boards have been able to say, 'Tallahassee made me do it.' I used to say it myself," says Tom Weightman, a former Pasco superintendent who now directs the Florida Association of District School Superintendents. "We always say, 'Let us make those decisions.'

"Well, be careful what you ask for. This move to devolution could mean more heat at the local level."

Damning stats and sleepless nights

After Gov. Jeb Bush named him to the state board last month, T. Willard Fair began having trouble sleeping.

"I kept thinking, 'What an opportunity!' " says Fair, president of the Urban League of Greater Miami and one of Bush's most prominent African-American supporters. "This is a civil rights revolutionist's dream come true. I have an opportunity to help write the rules and policies."

In interviews last week, board members resisted questions about their goals for Florida's new system of education governance, which requires them to set policy for everything from kindergarten through graduate school.

Experts say there is no state board in the United States with such broad responsibilities. The members know it. One of their biggest challenges, they say, is to avoid being overwhelmed.

"It may be a year before we understand how the system will work," says board member Carolyn Roberts, an Ocala Realtor and former chairman of the state Board of Regents.

The seven members bring to the job very different life experiences. Five are Republicans. Two are African Americans and one is Hispanic. Two are professional educators. Two others are professional investors.

Seven years ago, Fair co-founded one of Florida's first charter schools in partnership with Bush, whom he considers a good friend.

The school was in Liberty City, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the state. Fair says the struggle to create it from nothing, and then to raise student achievement, gave him a first-hand look at what Florida educators face.

Board member Linda Eads got the same look. She worked in the Miami-Dade school district for more than 25 years.

Her success as a principal, she says, often came despite the state's many rules and regulations.

"I was one of those principals that always asked, 'Why do we have to do it this way?' " Eads says.

Unlike some board members who clearly hold a low opinion of Florida schools, she bristles at any suggestion that the schools are broken.

"I am appalled when I hear that," Eads says. "I don't see public education as a mess that we need to clean up. I do think things could be much better. I see this as an opportunity to help my peers and colleagues."

Board member Charles Garcia, a former White House Fellow who now runs a Boca Raton investment firm, has a different perspective.

He uses a businessman's eye to assess Florida's education system. He doesn't like a lot of what he sees, citing Florida's dismal graduation rates. He is especially perturbed about the poor performance of Hispanic students.

"If I was running a business and I saw those statistics, I would say we have a serious problem," Garcia says. "And we can't address these problems with the usual solutions."

For now, Fair's dream of closing the achievement gap, and Garcia's goal of making Florida a national model for educating Hispanic children, will have to wait.

Much of today's meeting will be devoted to introductions, orientation and devising a set of "guiding principles." Then the board will begin three tasks: establishing a budget, reorganizing the Department of Education and rewriting the school code.

Horne says the budget recommendation won't be much different from those in the past. There isn't enough time this year, he says, to develop a spending plan that truly reflects what is supposed to be a "seamless" education system.

The most important job is reworking the code. That, Handy says, "will be our legacy for the year."

Student fees, lockers and unclaimed cadavers

It certainly will be a sizable one: The code is 5,000 pages.

Every year lawmakers add, delete or amend the school laws. The result is a massive, often confusing patchwork of rules and regulations.

The code covers high school graduation requirements, financial aid guidelines, student activity fees and the rules for searching student lockers. There is even a chapter dealing with the "Disposition of Dead Bodies." It says unclaimed cadavers should be sent to the Anatomical Board at the University of Florida.

While the rewrite covers every imaginable sector of Florida's education system, the impact won't be uniform.

The changes at the university level, for example, will be primarily aimed at finishing the transformation that began earlier this year when the Legislature abolished the state Board of Regents and shifted many of its powers to new university boards of trustees.

Handy cites that as a prime example of his idea of devolution.

"But now we have to bring the new structure in line with the statutes," says Jeff Muir, a member of the work group and a University of South Florida lobbyist.

That means writing laws that will allow each university to negotiate employee salaries, create new degree programs and, perhaps, charge different rates of tuition.

The education reorganization has left the public schools virtually untouched. But the majority of the school code deals with the K through 12 school system, so that's where most of the future changes will occur.

Decisions now being made in Tallahassee -- whether children must be taught about the contributions of Hispanics and women, for example -- could be shifted to the local level. And one member of the work group warns that "local level" doesn't necessarily mean the superintendent or school board.

Principals. Teachers. Parents. All of them could end up with more power -- and responsibility -- to make decisions, says Patrick Heffernan, president of Floridians for School Choice and a member of the work group.

"I've heard some people in the (group) say, 'Get ready for storms at sea,' " Heffernan says.

Exactly how the rewrite will unfold is still a mystery, even to the key players.

Board members say they are looking to Horne and Handy for direction. Horne says he needs input from the board.

"I'm not shy about giving my opinions," he says, "but I don't think it's my job to tell that board what to do. I'm more a source of information."

Despite the early awkwardness, the board members expect to have a major say in the final product.

Fair, for example, says he hopes to look back in a few years and take stock of the board's work in a very personal way.

"If my grandson attends school under rules and regulations that do not meet his needs," Fair said, "he has no one to blame but his grandpa."

Recent coverage

University presidents told to expect scrutiny (July 13, 2001)

Horne takes helm of education (July 1, 2001)

New trustees mostly GOP businessmen (June 29, 2001)

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk