In the wake of some rather intense media scrutiny of what appear to be the consequences of Pinellas County's decision to, um, de-desegregate its schools, the nation's schools honcho, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan paid a visit to one of the schools in question Friday. While constructive criticism abounded, he also had some harsh words.
Duncan spoke to media Friday shortly after he met with parents, teachers, students and activists privately at Campbell Park Elementary School — one of the five predominantly black south St. Pete schools that took a nosedive in student achievement after a 2007 decision to undo racial integration in the county's schools. In short, he didn't like what he saw, but acknowledged the school has been taking action in the past couple of years.
“This seemed like a manmade disaster," he said. "You had schools that were relatively high-performing that became five of the bottom ten or 15 schools in the state in a relatively short amount of time. That's a manmade disaster. It's going in the right direction, it's getting better now. But that's unacceptable. It's heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking."
He said while the Tampa Bay Times' investigation, "Failure Factories," helped draw attention to the issue, he wasn't exactly a fan of the title — education people tend to not like the F-word.
“I think we have to acknowledge that history, face it ultimately and honestly," he said. "The children in this community are not failures. The children in any community are not failures. We as adults have failed them, and it's important to acknowledge that and figure out, given that, where do we go?”
During the discussion, he said, there was extensive talk of how to effectively address the relatively low success rate of students at the five elementary schools, which also include Lakewood, Melrose, Fairmount and Maximo. Creating stability of leadership within the school district would be essential, he said; current Superintendent Mike Grego has only been in his position for a few years. But Duncan added the district isn't solely to blame; that fostering community involvement would also help kids do better in schools.
“The school district has to own it, and lead it, and drive, it," he said. "This is not just a school district issue. It has to be the entire community coming together: nonprofits, social service agencies, churches and faith-based institutions.”
“The reality is, if you have schools where you have concentrated poverty, you need more resources to address the multiple needs that kids bring, or you need to have a strategy in your district where you maintain a degree of socioeconomic diversity and schools [that] are able to support the students that are most at risk within their building," Kind said. "But what you have here, unfortunately, it seems, over the course of this history, is a concentration of the students that are most at risk without the additional resources and support. And that is a recipe for disaster.”
Grego also spoke to reporters after the meeting. He said the district has made improvements in the years since he took over, even though public scrutiny only recently began. The district, for example, is already implementing an arts and music grant at the five schools for students who excel in those areas. Plus, he said, schools are also now employing paraprofessionals in every classroom as well as more social workers and school psychologists.
“It might be perceived that stuff is starting right now. Stuff started in the '12, '13, '14 school years," he said.
And while the Times exposé was unequivocally a PR nightmare for the district, there was kind of a silver lining in that there's now drive to do something about it.
“We have to keep that sense of urgency and that momentum going,” Grego said.
Also in on the conversation were local civil rights activists, who sought to have a broader conversation about institutionalized racism, which they deem the root cause of the problem. Ashley Green of the Bay Area Activist Coalition said her group was among several to reach out at the federal level, which helped lead to Duncan's and King's visit.
“It came out of an effort to try to collect more data and actually have some help analyzing what's going on in these schools. We've been trying to focus on school discipline for a while now," she said. “When we saw the article and how many kids were featured in the article that had already gotten involved in the criminal justice system, we just called out for help. We didn't know what to do or where to go. We were lucky enough to start having conversations with some folks in DC that helped sort of guide us through what's been happening with those numbers.”
Green didn't exactly seem blown away by the discussion that had occurred earlier, but was satisfied that there was effort.
“It was definitely a start to a longer conversation,” she said.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2015.