Concerned parent & school board employee: A call for accountability and change in Alachua County Schools
Letter to the editor
As both a parent and an employee of the Alachua County School Board, I can no longer remain silent about the troubling state of our district. Over the past 11 years, we have gone through **seven superintendents** — a staggering number that reflects a deep dysfunction within the leadership. The constant turnover at the top is a symptom of a larger issue: a lack of accountability and fiscal responsibility within the school board itself.
While teachers—who are the backbone of our children’s education—are offered a **meager 1% raise**, the district continues to create and fund unnecessary, bloated administrative positions. Our district is **top-heavy**, and it’s the children who suffer. The refusal to properly compensate our hardworking teachers is driving morale into the ground, and it’s no surprise that even school board employees are pulling their children from our public schools to enroll them in private or charter institutions.
This cannot continue. **We need a complete overhaul of the Alachua County School Board**. Every current member needs to step down, and we must rethink how this district is run. For too long, decisions have been made behind closed doors with no input from the community. **The people should have the right to elect the superintendent**, removing that control from the hands of the school board.
Furthermore, school board positions should not be paid. Those in power should be held to the same standards as the employees they oversee, and they should face evaluation and termination if they fail to perform. It’s time for the school board to be just as accountable as the teachers and staff they so readily criticize and dismiss.
If we don’t take immediate action, enrollment will continue to decline. **Our best and brightest will continue to leave**, and Alachua County Public Schools will struggle to meet even the most basic needs of its students. We need to stand up and take back control of our district. The future of our children depends on it.
Sincerely,
Concerned Parent and School Board Employee, Alachua County
The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Assertions of facts in letters are similarly the responsibility of the author. Letters may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.
Very well said! I’m one teacher that left the district because of the lack of accountability on the part of admins that are making six-figure salaries and have nothing to show for. For instance, they created positions for teachers to leave the classroom and coach other teachers, most of these coaches do absolutely nothing!!! I could go on and one but the letter above says it all!!!!!
This right here! Creating positions that are overpaid and unnecessary.
I was there when they started this program. I was even approached to be one of the High School Coaches. It was a vacation if I accepted it. I just didn’t want to be part of this charade. It was a ridiculous concept. If you need to learn how to teach your subject matter, you shouldn’t be in any classroom, period. Storyboards and think tanks of different ways to introduce Algebra problems or other concepts. I had to attend one of these; it was a considerable expense and a boring week of dog and pony shows. Then, you write up the evaluations at the end of it. Of course, everyone says it was phenomenal, as it doesn’t pay to make enemies in this county.
They claim DeSantis is trying to kill public education, but they need to look inward. They are doing it themselves.
II have devoted 37 years to working within this dysfunctional system as a High School mathematics Teacher and Coach. It is disconcerting to see that many self-proclaimed experts lack genuine classroom experience. Despite their theoretical knowledge from textbooks, they fall short in practical application. A visit to the main Administration building exposes a great deal of unnecessary tasks and efforts to project importance. Clearly, the system is in urgent need of repair.
The School Board is heavily influenced by the local Political machine of G’ville Centrics. Schools in the surrounding areas are run-down, with temporary structures spread out over vast expanses of land. Immediate intervention is crucial; the situation cannot be left unaddressed.
AMEN! Requiring our board to be held accountable with evaluations is not asking too much. Because if you’re doing what you’re elected to do, then there are no issues!
It’s up to the voters who have seen fit to make only one change.
This is why we need single member districts for SBAC and stop letting Gainesville make all of the decisions.
You are correct. Same for the County Commission.
If you really want to know how top heavy this district is in paying some employees, some who have “created” positions within a school. Look at the first page few pages on this site and cross reference their names to the schools/positions they hold.
When a highly paid administrator/ supervisor retires or is removed from school, a position is sometimes created and they keep their same salary and benefits or they come back after a year of retirement and keep their exorbitant salary while basically doing a clerical job at a school, while others in the same positions are paid a pittance and the school board refuses to grant a nominal 5-6% raise and instead offers 1.6% which is literally pennies,
https://govsalaries.com/salaries/FL/alachua-county-public-schools
It’s not who you know, its what you know! A consistent theme within this criminal organization, use dirt as leverage! Don’t report crimes, use it for a promotion! A constant hiring circle of accomplices!
Sorry I meant MEBANE
This is exactly what happened with Manda Bessner. She was a HORRIBLE principal at Santa Fe but now she is a Supervisor of Curriculum with the district making over 90K a year. She does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in that role as well!!!!!
Get your kids out of the Alachua County school system. Take advantage of the school choice money that is available! I believe that for most students it is currently around $7400 per year! Private school all the way!! Better education and a lot less indoctrination! Teachers should seek jobs at private schools as well….
Private schools don’t want those kid. Private schools are based largely on the objective of co-immersion with other hard working, successful families who don’t need socialist government wealth transfers to educate their kids. If you can’t afford a private school without vouchers, private school families don’t want you there. And they’ll look down at you like you look down at the lady in front of you at Publix buying sirloin with EBT while talking on her iPhone 16.
Parents should feed and educate their own children
…it’s called personal responsibility…
Don’t breed em if you can’t educate and feed them…
The whole socialist system of public schools being paid for by property tax is unfair…
if you got a child in the system, you should be required to pay a user fee for each child in the system..
if the parent paid the cost for their child’s education, you would get better results!
The public schools should be run from Tallahassee…we don’t need a local school board…we aren’t reinventing the wheel here…
Mr.Pink I’m sure you are a product of the public school system🤔.Maybe you should be more considerate of your choice of words to not offend others who do indeed work 9-10 hrs a day to provide for their child(ren) and still that’s not enough.
Leon county School district is phenomenal! Rocky gets it‼️
Oh Jed
The private school that my neighbor’s kid attends has a diverse mix of middle class kids of all races.
The only private school that looks down on less wealthy kids doesn’t even accept vouchers
As for the checkout line, some of us have better things to do than notice what other folks are buying or what model of phone they have.
The fact that Michele Faulk an employee named in lawsuits and criminal investigations into crimes against children is still active and still around children everyday says it all. ACPS is currently a corrupt criminal organization.
Where are the financial audits?
Where are the internal investigations?
There aren’t any. They know, they’ve known.
The financial audits are here:
https://flauditor.gov/pages/dsb_efile%20pages/alachua%20dsb.htm
I so agree with you. Thank you for you editorial.
Yes, yes, yes! I’m a public school teacher here as well and pulled my son out and put him in private. It’s not the teachers (well most of them) and it’s not the principals (most of them)…it’s higher up positions that need to be looked at (mostly all of them). I’m almost 20 years in and contemplate leaving on the daily.
I actually think it is some of the teachers that are protected by the teachers union that are also part of the problem. Anyone that has taught in Alachua County knows all about the “gifts” given to schools in the form of incompetent teachers. Teachers who did things that should have resulted in termination at any other place of employment , the teacher’s union protects. It is also a lot of administrators at specific school sites who don’t do their job because no one at the district level holds them accountable and they cop out and blame that their hands are tied because of the teachers union. And it is certainly the district administration that is full of incompetent principals that have been moved to made up positions but continued to be paid their inflated salaries. It is a combination of all three. The cherry on top of this dysfunction is that fact that every time anyone tries to come up with an innovative solution, everyone at the district level says “we cannot do that because of the union” so, the union needs to go, as well. Contract out custodial, mechanics, maintenance to contracted companies to save money on FRS and insurance so more money can be invested in highly qualified educators-both instructional and administrative. Get rid of all that are doing the bare minimum. That is how you will finally see change in this school system. This has been needed for over 25 years.
That’s a fact. I got out of teaching in ’82 and saw this throughout the 70’s. REALLY bad teachers who were just moved (some to the county office). I think I saw only one teacher in my 10 years of teaching get fired for incompetence. Unions ARE a HUGE problem.
This is a well written opinion. The school board need complete overhaul
Correct but, like the city commission, it just won’t happen.
Diyoonnnnne say: We need change. We need change yall.
Govt jobs are unionized, and unions prevent rewarding of individual merit with individual pay raises. So, gov’t creates administrative jobs to promote good workers, as a workaround — but the worker goes into an office away from where they did good work in a classroom before. 🤡
Unions are based on communism. They’re ok for setting standard insurance and retirement group plans, but that should be all.
The reason they won’t set individual pay is due to their tradeoff in favor of job security, which in itself is corrupting also. But also they know employees will be favored based on personalities and brown-nosing too often, instead of job performance.
But that can be prevented using holistic evaluations proving which employees are actually performing better than others. Just getting to the first step would be a battle.
ACLUSPLCDNC 👺🤡👿💩👹
I agree unions are a double edged sword. While they represent honest hard working employees they also represent lazy, dysfunctional employees that should have been fired on day one.
Not only has the ACSB failed (us) the parents and our children with their inconsistent years of continued dysfunction, the entire Alachua County School District is full of corruption and has been for decades.
This is heart-wrenching for our children that suffer educational demise under this bizarre corrupt ACSB and the entire Alachua County System. The Governor needs to come in and replace the ACSB and clean house with correcting the decades of corruption within the entire Alachua County School District.
The Superintendent and ACSB are known for hiring their family members and placing them in administrative positions, also they are known for appointing unqualified staff, also rehiring unqualified staff in Administrative positions, such as the rehired, retired appointed ESE Director, Kathy Black, Chief of Equity, Dr. Antwanique Edwards.
Ms. Black and Dr. Edwards have appointed and hired unqualified supervisors such as Dr.Toni Griffin, Coi Owens, Kelly Brill-Jones, Laura Schwartz. These individuals need to be completely factchecked to attest the truth and validity of their licensing and certifications because they work directly with our children. An audit needs to take place. There should be an official financial examination of each individual accounts, they all need to be thoroughly investigated and immediately removed from their administrative and supervisors positions and terminated.
I agree. I. think the State needs to step in and clean up and clear out this mess.
Great letter!!!!!! Fire all of them!
Start with paying and treating teachers like the professionals they are. Then you have a surplus of great teachers to choose and the field becomes competitive. This should begin to reduce the pull of the union. Getting rid of the union without any change to how teachers are paid/treated will only accelerate the teacher shortage crisis that looms large.
We lose massive talent in the teaching field and every year. When will we wake up?
And yes, the school board is ridiculous and grows as an embarrassment to our county.
I’m sorry it is not always the school board or even the superintendent..it is the sorry teacher union..it’s their bargaining agreement. The superintendent wants to make changes but sometimes his hands are tied because of the union. Find out how much Carmen Ward is paid. Isn’t it ironic that she supported Wu..why is that.. is it because she knew that Ms. mcgraw was trying to do things that would benefit the students
Maybe it’s also because we can’t keep a superintendent… the union didn’t pick them or fire them. Losing Karen for Carlee sure wasn’t a win.
Carlee is now teaching in Juneau Alaska.
FL schools are so terribly underfunded amd teachers are the lowest paid in the nation. That is at the root of the problem. They have to offer admin $$$ because that job would be very undesirable.
Excellent!!!!!!!!!!! And “YES” there needs to be an overhaul!!!! I would love to see the Superintendent position be a “voter” decision!!!
Not just the teachers need a raise, paraprofessionals need to make a decent wage, right now Target says better
I agree!! However, I think they should get paid; but not for more than they are putting in. Certainly there should be some accountability.
Thank you for posting. Well said.