Citrus Elected Leadership Summit

Participants: Let’s do this frequently

Last Thursday, January 28^th, 2016, many of Citrus County’s elected leaders came together without personal agendas to talk about working together for our community.

When Ron Kitchen (now the Chairman of the Board of County Commission) called me last October (as the then current Chairman of the Citrus County School Board) to ask if I would approach the School Board about a joint meeting between then Citrus BOCC, the Cities and the School Board, I was surprised and a bit nervous. I thought why now after all the trouble we had last year when the School Board tried unsuccessfully to get the BOCC to jointly meet (see Chronicle, “Commission, school board off to rough start” 12/17/2014) and was refused. One had to ask, what had changed? Incoming Chairman Ron Kitchen is what had changed. Mr. Kitchen made it clear months earlier when he said, “we should want to work with the School Board”. It was those comments that I trusted with hopes of building a better working relationship with the BOCC as we came together for this summit.

All of the current serving School Board members; Bryant, Doug Dodd, Chairwoman Linda Powers and I attended the summit. Superintendent Sandra “Sam” Himmel, was in Tallahassee for a previously scheduled meeting with the Florida Commissioner of Education and was unable to attend the summit but Assistant Superintendent Mike Mullen attended in her place. County Commissioners, Scott Carnahan, Joe Meek and Chairman Ron Kitchen; Crystal River Councilmen Andy Houston and Robert Holmes and Mayor Jim Farley; and Inverness Council members Hepfer and McBride all attended and participated in the summit.

Mr. Kitchen facilitated the meeting and with no specific item agendas planned. Mr. Kitchen opened the meeting and shared that he felt this meeting was important since Mr. Kitchen said, “we all work for the same people“. Mr. Kitchen then opened up the meeting to begin talking about any items we wished to share.

Over the course of the meeting a number of issues were talked about, and regardless whether the issue was one we were all in agreement of, or if it was a more divided subject everyone was professional, respectful and listened to one another.   For over four hours the group met and discussed topics ranging from; school funding, Career and Technical Education, Home Rule, Whispering Pines Park, Withlacoochee Technical College, Crystal River City Walk, and improving communication just to name a few.

As the meeting came to an end it was evident that the group desired to meet again and more often. It was proposed and agreed for the Chairmen of the respective groups to meet regularly, perhaps once a month or once a quarter and then for additional summits to happen on an annual bases.

Only by communicating, collaborating and working together will we improve as a community. I want to thank Chairman Ron Kitchen for envision, planning and making this event happen. I cannot wait for the next summit.

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FL-DOE: Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry EOCs will NOT count for 2014-2015 school year

Today the Florida Department of Education released an important memorandum entitled; ‘Preliminary Technical Assistance on House Bill 7069’, where FL-DOE states; “For the 2014-2015 school year only, because of the unavailability of independently verified statewide assessment results in Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry, the statutory requirements to include these results in the final course grade are inoperative. As a result, school districts should calculate final course grades and make promotion decisions without regard to the 30 percent requirement that typically applies.”

I am most pleased that Florida Educational Commissioner Pam Stewart and her team understood what students’ and school districts’ have been facing due to the numerous state assessment issues that Florida has struggled with this school year.

While I am relieved for our students regarding these End of Course Exams (EOCs), many other State Assessments will still be used for determining students’ grades, course requirements, and/or graduation requirements.

Further, I am greatly concerned that neither HB 7069 nor any other action today has relieved districts from the requirements of using these same State Assessments for determining teacher/administrators evaluations or school grades. We still need either the Governor or FL-DOE to suspend the use of these assessments for any performance pay requirements for teachers and administrators, as well as suspend the use of these assessments for school accountability/school grade for the 2014 – 2015 school year.

To read the entire ‘Preliminary Technical Assistance on House Bill 7069’ memorandum, follow this link: https://thomastalks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/HB-7069-TA-Memo-5-18-15.pdf

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