Update on the VERY interesting thread on NextDoor re "A Bright Future For Hollywood PAC" that supports Josh Levy against my friend, Catherine "Cat" Uden

Tuesday October 21st, 2024

3:00 p.m.

Below, an update on the VERY interesting thread on NextDoor re "A Bright Future For Hollywood PAC" that supports Josh Levy's re-election against my friend, Catherine "Cat" Uden. 

But first...

Join #CatUden’s Canvassing Crew on Saturday Oct. 26th for a fun night @ Hollyweird Festival, Dwtn #HollywoodFL! 

Costume theme is... cats! 

Meet @ 7:30 PM, Anniversary Park, N. 20th Ave. & Hollywood Blvd., then we'll walk the festival @ 8 PM. 

Bring a reusable bottle of water!

Just to be clear, I was NOT involved in any way in putting this very interesting thread at bottom of post -on the VERY frustrating Next Door app!- by Hollywood resident Steve Schneider together.

Actually, I don't think I've ever met him or spoken to him, though I could be wrong, of course.

I did have a slightly similar thought a few weeks ago about doing a deep-dive via my blog regarding who was behind the campaign PAC that Josh Levy & Co. have created for his mayoral campaign.

And any future campaigns as well, since Beam Furr's County Commission seat becomes vacant in November 2026.

Frankly, I think one of the most-unasked public questions of the past 18 months is IF Josh Levy won for a third and final time, would he run for Beam's seat in 2 years? There seems to have been no discussion of it at the so-called candidate forum from a few weeks ago.

While some of you may've indeed thought about this already, or, perhaps even wandered up to him at some point after a Civic Association meeting he was at and asked him this important question directly, thus far, IF you have, you haven't shared that info -and his answer- with me. So far!

Just saying...

Also, I'd actually planned on posting something next week along the lines of a database on all the campaign contributions in Hollywood from 2012, 2016, 2020 and this year, with totals by campaign, contributor and industry.

As many of you already know, the latter is very often a fudge, since for years, as an example, the state's #1 lobbyist, Ron Book, who repped Hallandale Beach for years even as he had other clients whose interests were contrary to HB's, had his daughter Lauren also make political contributions around the state once she turned 18.

That was done using his Aventura office as her "home," since Aventura was usually listed on the filed docs I pored through years ago, not one in Broward, despite nearly all the local TV and print reporters insisting that the Books lived in Broward.

I'd originally checked them thinking that I wanted to have the information stored up so that at some point, IF those docs might... disappear -you know, by accident!- the way that "inconvenient" govt. docs often do, I'd be fine and have the information to be able to use going forward.

I don't care how much you love politics, using a child as a separate political campaign contribution conduit was always an ethical stretch.

Even if you end up hiring her to work at your lobbying shop, and she follows her father into the lobbying trade, and thus gets a leg-up for her later runs for political office.

Yes, years and years of her father and her saying and doing things that lead to LOTS of the state's savviest, well-connected and deep-pocketed people and organizations owing her favors, even as she is having them giving her non-profit LOTS of taxpayer money, including a very nice salary for a non-profit named after herself. 

In case you forgot about that situation, well-described here at a once-favorite website of mine, the Florida Bulldog, which has become so biased the past few years...

New Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book has conflict of interest as Republicans quietly shower taxpayer millions on her charity  
https://www.floridabulldog.org/2021/05/new-senate-democratic-leader-lauren-book-conflict-of-interest/

But things being the way they are here in South Florida, the local news media has largely ignored the issue of Lauren Book's precocious political contributions for years, and treated that particular parenting behavior of her father's -to get more $ to his faves- as NORMAL, which is why you now can't find any stories online with complete information about Lauren Books' political contributions since she turned 18 years old, just 22 years ago.

Dave

David Bruce Smith

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/

Instagram: @hbbtruth https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidSmith0215

https://nextdoor.com/p/TNf9zJsxW__5?post=364584837&utm_source=email&is=tpe&section=cta&mar=true&ct=ndx5V-iK-lpf0FYVVr6q4P_Bx01tlamAxgAN0PjydlRpmsd4mNFsRG-lqRagRHin&ec=OWKiQRDj9vEHAYwTV6YMARldwuFdgGkeefhwfGYAE0s%3D&mobile_deeplink_data=eyJhY3Rpb24iOiAidmlld19wb3N0IiwgInBvc3QiOiAzNjQ1ODQ4Mzd9&link_source_user_id=30408374

Now is the time to make up for the lost opportunity of the past decade to make sure that the Broward Public Schools are firmly under the Broward Inspector General's purview, to root out unethical and corrupt behavior

Above: The hulking octop[us-like presence at 600 SE Third Avenue, Fort Lauderdale that serves as the multi-armed and entangled HQ for the Broward County Public Schools and the governing Broward County School Board

Originally posted Monday September 16th, 2024, 

Updated Saturday September 21st, 2024 

Most of you who know me even reasonably well, whether from any of the hundreds and hundreds of public meetings, civic association meetings or forums I've attended in South Florida over the past 20 years since returning from the Washington, D.C. area, largely from here on my humble blog, via my popular Twitter feed, or via my fact-filled observational and strategic emails over the years -IF you are on my mailing list- know one thing about me.

I have been focused like a laser-beam on ethics in local government and public policy in South Florida since long before I created this blog 17 years ago. Probably since my family first moved here in the summer of 1968, me, aged 7 years old, but a very curious and precocious seven year-old to be sure.

And, a kid quite positive that South Florida did NOT make sense the way other places so often did, however imperfectly. That clearly hasn't changed.

Back when the Broward County Office of Inspector General was originally proposed by the Broward County Commission, in large part because of increasing public outcry and the heroic efforts of my own district County Commissioner, Sue Gunzburger, YEARS after such an office was desperately needed, I had the somewhat unique distinction(!) of often being the only member of the public -in all of Broward County!- who actually attended the appointed Advisory Board's meetings.

Meetings that were at 8 a.m. sharp at the County HQ on Andrews Avenue, maybe a mile walk from the photo up above. 

Me being me, the type of person who enjoys having hard evidence of what I saw and heard when I'm making the argument for or against an idea or public policy -and to guard against occasional moments of boredom or even almost falling asleep in a large county room- I brought along my fully-charged video cameras and lightweight tripod.

And I recorded what was said -and by who- no matter how inspired or banal. and made contemporaneous notes on who was in the room, who they were communicating with, and what they were otherwise doing. Sh-h-h... lobbyists!

Yes, despite the fact that the meetings were deemed something important in the larger scheme of the county's efforts to regain the public's trust after so many scandals over the years, someone made the conscious choice NOT to have the meetings in the County Commission chambers that were already equipped with TV cameras, to make everything easy.

Instead, they were held in a much-smaller room. 

Without any cameras.

And, so, was NOT recorded by the County, just me.

I was always VERY aware of the fact that I was usually the only member of the public in the room, AND and that I had some pretty quality video of the BTS workings of government that nobody else in South Florida had, whether the local news media or other interested parties, like local elected officials.

To be kind, the Advisory Board meetings were very much a Poor Man's version of the Constitutional Congress in Philadelphia, but with air conditioning and so-so coffee in the back of the room.

It was there, right near the county-provided coffee, where I parked myself at every meeting I attended to make myself available for quick chats with the members in attendance. 

I almost always brought bagels + donuts along from home to keep myself fully awake and full of enough energy to pounce or text on my telephone at the first sign of mischief.

There, not so much holding court as guarding the waterfront, along with a thermos of hazelnut coffee I'd brewed beforehand at home, I took copious notes. 

Over a period of several months, I came to know these appointed members like the back of my hand: I knew who was always diligent about being properly prepared from the start and ready to push for stricter ethical standards in the county, and, of course, who was, well, generally unprepared, winging-it, and always looking at their watch, ready to throw in the towel if that had a quorum. 

And there were a LOT of times I thought that the latter was going to happen! 

From Day One, I was always mindful of the fact that the only thing preventing the members from giving up was the sure knowledge that the appointees definitley did NOT want to publicly embarrass their political patrons by making it seem like ethics u. Do no harm! 😠 

 Before she eventually moved up to Lutz from Hollywood, my good friend and well-known South Florida civic activist Charlotte Greenbarg also appeared at times early in the AM, speaking for both common sense and with a deep and genuine appreciation for understanding human behavior in such a weird political dynamic.

One, where many members of the Advisory Board not only didn't want to embarrass the person who'd selected them for the position over others vying for it, but also because I knew for a fact that many of them clearly had their eyes on running for elective office some time in the near-future, IF they weren't already an elected somewhere in the county, or an important person at some interest group in Broward used to flexing their muscles. 

Charlotte had years of first-hand experience dealing with the all-too-frequent and frustrating incompetency and failures of the Broward School system by virtue of being the much-respected head of its Audit Committee, and so had an insight into the realities of School Board's operation and (often pointless) direction that none of the Advisory Board members could hope to match. 

Charlotte and I were folks in the community at the time who were willing to actually show up in-person to publicly support the much-needed IG Office, and consistently spoke under Public Comments asking that the office be sure to include the Broward School system. 

The reason, of course, is obvious, because everyone who knew anything about how things REALLY work/works in the county, knew that some of the worst financial/patronage excesses and rampant, endemic ethical corruption and misbehavior was located there. 

Often, as we know from numerous investigations, hiding in plain sight. 

But nobody was willing to do the right thing, least of all, in the Broward SAO. 

 Unfortunately, most of the people selected by the county commissioners at the time to represent them on the board had very different priorities, and were NOT particularly interested in seeing the Broward School system be included, as well as see that the office cover lots of other things in the county that were common with such IG offices around the country. 

Naturally, me being me, before the first meeting, I'd spent a lot of time researching just those very things, so that as often as possible, I'd speak to the members before and after meetings about what could be done to make the office even more effective. 

Here's me in 2014, when there was a push to expand the Broward IG Office's areas of concern and responsibility.

https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/robert-wechsler-analyzes-it-cityethics.html 

 But as I learned years ago in electoral politics at the national and state level -and trust me, the people selected to the IG Advisory Board were VERY political- the #1 rule in politics is... to know your universe. 

People who didn't even think the office should exist were very vocal on the Advisory Board, so pulling THEM in the right direction was, alas, a losing battle. 

Now, the public in Broward finally has the opportunity to make up for that lost time! 

Sun Sentinel

Voters could expand watchdog role - Initiative asks whether Broward County inspector general's responsibilities should include the school district
Scott Travis South Florida Sun Sentinel
September 14, 2024

School Board elections are over, but Broward voters can still decide in November whether they want some new oversight to help the district root out waste, fraud and corruption.

A ballot initiative will ask those voting in the general election Nov. 5 to say yes or no to expanding the role of the Broward County inspector general to include the Broward School District.

Read the rest of the article at:

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2024/09/14/broward-voters-to-decide-whether-to-expand-watchdog-role-to-school-district/ 

WSVN-7 News

Proposed amendment would expand authority of Broward Inspector General to include independent oversight of school board operations

By Chantal Cook, Vanessa Medina
September 10, 2024
https://wsvn.com/news/local/broward/proposed-amendment-would-expand-authority-of-broward-inspector-general-to-include-independent-oversight-of-school-board-operations/

Dave

David Bruce Smith 

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/ 

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/ 

Instagram: @hbbtruth https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidSmith0215 

Important #HollywoodFL joint Civic Association meeting on Monday June 17th re 2024 #Hurricane season/preparedness and other important city issues re development. @ 7 pm, Hollywood Beach Culture & Community Center

Important! 

#HollywoodFL Comm. @hollywoodcaryl, Hollywood Beach Civic Ass'n., Hollywood North Beach Civic Ass'n. + Hollywood Lakes Civic Ass'n. hosting a joint meeting on Monday June 17th @ 7 pm, Hollywood Beach Culture & Community Center. 

2024 #Hurricane season and other important city issues re development. 

FYI: I'm going to STILL be out-of-town on Monday, so I suspect there'll be more delicious cookies/brownies and coffee around to eat and slurp than usual!

Dave

David Bruce Smith

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/

Instagram: @hbbtruth https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidSmith0215

In 2024, a presidential election year, facts still matter in America. Despite how much Joe Biden consistently lies about his own life and voting record, serially misrepresenting it in a sad, pathetic attempt to place himself in the center of everything that matters or has has value in the USA, and its history since WWII, to appeal to people whom his own staff and supporters mock. Biden's false face and lies aren't fooling anyone! Compare Biden's lies about saving lives as a lifeguard with Ronald Reagan's actual reality as a teenager in the 1920's.Yes, I've got some thoughts!

In 2024, a presidential election year, facts still matter in America. Despite how much Joe Biden consistently lies about his own life and voting record, serially misrepresenting it in a sad, pathetic attempt to place himself in the center of everything that matters or has has value in the USA, and its history since WWII, to appeal to people whom his own staff and supporters mock. Biden's false face and lies aren't fooling anyone! 

Compare Biden's lies about saving lives as a lifeguard with Ronald Reagan's actual reality as a teenager in the 1920's. Yes, I've got some thoughts!

I bring this up today because there has been YET another attempt to reinvent Joe Biden and make him something he has never been or ever was, and I use as my jumping off point this tweet of Greg Price, below, https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1783900381346410512

It immediately set off alarms in my head, especially when Biden makes false claims about saving people's lives as a lifeguard.

Having had several friends in the past who were , in fact, real life guards who saved REAL LIVES, including along often-crazy Lake Michigan when I lived in Evanston and Wilmette, Illinois, in the latter case, but two blocks away from Lake Michigan...

It also made me recall what I'd seen in a great episode of the one series on PBS American Experience, that tends to be both the most honest factually and the one most down-the-middle politically, without the usual liberal cant and chic propaganda embedded into it that gets into almsot every other PBS program of the past 20 years. Unfortunately!

By the way, in case you want to read in its entirety the AP's 2005 article about then-New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and his willful deception about his amateur baseball career, it's here

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gov-admits-baseball-tale-untrue/#

He was someone I spoke to quite a few times in Washington DC when I lived and worked there from 1988-2003, when Richardson was first a New mexico congressman and later the U.N. Ambassador, before becoming governor.

I greatly admired him and his background, epsecially his serious foreign policy whehn he was just out of college and worked at the State Dept, then parlayed that into a very impressive career.

Then came news of his involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal, which seemed to paint a worse picture of him at first. Every subsequent bit of news was EVEN WORSE, which is where things stoodf when he died last September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Richardson

Gov. Admits Baseball Tale Untrue 

November 25, 2005 / 8:58 AM EST / AP

You can see the following tweet thread in its entirety at https://x.com/hbbtruth/status/1783928222914150685

Video is at: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7gbhw0

----

Dave

David Bruce Smith

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/

Instagram: @hbbtruth https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidSmith0215

Opening remarks of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Vice Chair of U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during Comm.'s annual Worldwide Threats Assessment hearing. Also have video of entire hearing. #China #Iran #Putin #Russia #TikTok #Xi #ByteDance

NB: Full hearing of U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats is at bottom of page!

https://www.rubio.senate.gov/rubio-delivers-opening-remarks-at-worldwide-threats-hearing-2/

Press Release via Senator Marco Rubio's Office
RUBIO DELIVERS OPENING REMARKS AT WORLDWIDE THREATS HEARING
MARCH 11, 2024

Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL) of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence delivered opening remarks during the annual Worldwide Threats Assessment hearing.

“I still think America, by every measure you can imagine – economically, culturally, militarily – remains the world’s strongest nation and should remain that way for the foreseeable future if we make the right choices. But that order that I just described is being challenged. It’s being challenged by nation-states that don’t like the way the world looks now. At least, they think it benefits America and hurts them. And they want to [sideline] America and our democratic allies with an alternative, if not a replacement.” – Senator Rubio


“Thank you all for coming here today. I also extend my thanks to the men and women who work underneath you that do the important work of keeping our country safe at what I think you could describe as one of those pivot moments in history, where what life will be like for a generation is being determined by what’s happening now and in the near future.

“While events are changing perhaps faster than any other time in human history, I think we have to remind ourselves of the why – the bigger outlined picture of why things are happening the way they are happening. Because I do think that they are all interrelated.

“From the end of the Cold War to the late 2000s, we lived in a unipolar world. The United States was basically the only country in the world that could project power everywhere at every time. And we were called upon to do many things in regard to that. But other nation states progressed during that stage.

“I still think America, by every measure you can imagine – economically, culturally, militarily – remains the world’s strongest nation and should remain that way for the foreseeable future if we make the right choices. But that order that I just described is being challenged. It’s being challenged by nation states that don’t like the way the world looks now. At least, they think it benefits America and hurts them. And they want to [sideline] America and our democratic allies with an alternative, if not a replacement.

“The Chinese believe we’re in inevitable decline and that their rise is inevitable. They don’t like the rules of the world as they believe were written by America and our allies, and so they increasingly are taking it upon themselves, at every opportunity, to challenge them in every domain. They steal our ideas on innovation and so forth, so that their companies can do the things that we do, but do it cheaper and flood markets with those products.

“I don’t need to tell this panel or the members of this committee and the general public that they’re expanding their military capabilities in an extraordinary way to include, not simply projecting power in the Indo-Pacific, but around the world. By the way, they manipulate loopholes in our laws and in our systems in this country to buy up land, buy up companies, gain strategic advantage in industries, and undermine our industries in return.

“They are a major part of flooding this country with deadly drugs that are destroying communities and ravaging entire families. And they’ve also gotten very good at hiring lobbyists and even deputizing corporate America to come up here and lobby us for things that are beneficial to Chinese goals at the expense of this country, long term.

“I think it’s important to mention here today, they also happen to control [ByteDance]. Anybody who says they don’t doesn’t know what they’re talking about, because every company in China is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. They happen to control a company that owns one of the world’s best artificial intelligence algorithms. It’s the one that’s used in this country by TikTok, and it uses the data of Americans to basically read your mind and predict what videos you want to see.

“The reason why TikTok is so successful, the reason why it’s so attractive, is because it knows you better than you know yourself, and the more you use it, the more it learns. The problem is not TikTok or the videos. The problem is the algorithm that powers it is controlled by a company in China that must do whatever the Chinese Communist Party tells them to do.

“And the only way that that algorithm works is if that company in China, under the control of the Chinese government, is given access to the data that TikTok collects. TikTok does not work without that algorithm. And that algorithm is controlled by a company that’s controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, under the law of China.

“In the case of Putin, he also sees America as decadent and in decline. He views China and Russia as resilient. They view themselves as great powers. And he believes that great powers have a right to buffer states. He believes that great powers have a right, not just to have their own borders, but to control the countries around their borders as buffer states. They already have that in Belarus. It is one of the reasons why he invaded Ukraine.

“In the case of Iran, they want to export their Shia Islamic revolution to the entire Middle East. The problem with this is, two things stand in their way – the state of Israel and the United States of America. That is why they have proxy groups in places like Syria, in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Gaza, whom they use for their purposes.

“One of their purposes is to use these groups to attack Americans, so that we will say, ‘It’s not worth the trouble. We need to get out of there.’ And once we leave, then they’ll move on to Jordan and Bahrain. Then they’ll make Israel an unlivable place. Ultimately, their ambitions are the entire region and most of the Gulf kingdoms.

“That’s why I think it’s a mistake to view the horrific events of October 7th as simply the latest iteration of a longstanding Israeli-Palestinian problem. It is deeply tied to the head of this snake, and the head of this snake is in Iran and in Tehran.

“Add to these three countries North Korea. We haven’t heard a lot about it yet, but they have become increasingly aggressive. In fact, I would argue that we perhaps are closer to some armed hostilities than we’ve been in a decade or longer.

“Why have they become so aggressive? They feel empowered. They feel empowered because Putin is buying things from them and helping them to break their international isolation. And also because – I don’t know what percentage of their economy is powered by ransomware attacks and cyber hacking, but it’s substantial. They generate a lot of money from that.

“Then add to this parade of horribles the fact that terror is still a threat. Iran, as has been publicly reported, is still trying to kill former government officials that live in the United States of America. There are former government officials in this country, no longer in office, who require 24 hours a day security because Iran is trying to kill them inside the United States.

“Hezbollah, an agent of Iran, is also looking for ways to conduct terrorist attacks against American interests and Israeli and Jewish interests all over the world and here in the homeland as well. By the way, ISIS and al Qaeda are not out of business. They are still involved with Al-Shabab. They also want to kill Americans. If they could do it in the homeland, they would love that.

“And all of that is happening at a time in which perhaps the single largest, most eventful migration corridor in history is operating right off of our border.

“I think it’s a mistake sometimes to divide all of these problems geographically, because in some ways, they’re all interrelated. Yes, these individual states all have different ambitions, but they share a common goal. And the common goal is a world friendlier and better for them and their interests and a world in which America is weakened and less able to act.

“All of these crises begin to interlock in a way that helps them. For example, the Chinese and the Russians see great benefit in what’s happening in the Middle East, because they figure every dollar and every second of our attention that’s paid there is not paid to what’s happening with Ukraine or the Indo-Pacific. The Chinese see great benefit in Ukraine as well, because they view it as the more time and money we spend there, the less time and money and focus we have on them.

“In fact, I know the Chinese hope for one of two things – we deplete ourselves in Ukraine and/or the Middle East, particularly Ukraine, or we cut and run. Then they can go around the world and say, ‘See, I told you, America’s weak. I told you America is unreliable.’ They have a plan for either outcome, which makes it challenging for us as we decide what to do here.

“These things all come together…. The goals that Russia has, the goals that Iran has, the goals that North Korea has, the goals that the Chinese have, may be different goals, but one of the real developments that threatens the security of our country is that they are increasingly partnering with one another. It’s not a NATO alliance, not the sort of formal alliance that’s written out. But they are increasingly partnering with each other.

“It’s on selected topics, and it’s on selected opportunities, because they all share one goal, and that is, they want to weaken America, weaken our alliances, weaken our standing and our capability and our will. Because it helps them to achieve the world as they envision it, the world that they want. But it comes at our expense and at the expense of all that’s been built over the last 20 or 30 years.

“I think that one of the greatest dangers we face is the inability to see how all these things are interconnected. And I think one of the greatest challenges we face is to deal with them as if they are interconnected. I think that what life will be like on this planet for the next generation will be determined very much by what we do or fail to do here, over the next two to three years, with the issues that are before us today.”

Full hearing is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJHQ18Wx8RM

2 hours, 27 minutes, 25 seconds

Dave

David Bruce Smith

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/

Instagram: @hbbtruth https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidSmith0215

Tonight's important Broward Schools outreach mtg. re Broward Supt. Licata's plan to close 5 schools/sell property within a year, with 3 in SE Broward on the prospective chopping block because they are less than 70% capacity

Today's blog post is a follow-up to my blog post of WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2023, titled,

Torey Alston's call for "Major reform" now by the Broward County School Board is 100% correct -and 100% long overdue
https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/torey-alstons-call-for-major-reform-now.html

I also tweeted about that post here, https://x.com/hbbtruth/status/1729940297038078417?s=20

This was me on Twitter this past Sunday afternoon, plus the predicate tweets from BCPSCanDoBetter and Alexander Russo highlighting the Chicago Sun-Times account of what happened when the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed 50 schools throughout the nation's third-largest city.

Chicago Sun-Times

To report on the impact of Chicago’s mass school closings, we turned to neighborhood residents.
While City Hall and Chicago Public Schools put roadblocks in the way of reporting for the Sun-Times and WBEZ series, people who lived near the closed schools opened up with their stories.
By  Lauren FitzPatrick, December 28, 2023, 10:00am EST

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/12/28/23962649/cps-chicago-50-closed-schools

Will be interested to see who among SE #Broward elected officials/candidates fm #HollywoodFL #HallandaleBeach participate @ 3rd of 3 #BCPS' mtgs re under-enrolled schools Thurs. @ Flanagan HS @ 6 pm.  Spies tell me few of Usual Suspects @ either City Hall attended. 

Re Thursday's important mtg. re under-enrolled Broward schools, Supt.'s plan to close school/sell property of 5 within a year, with 3 in SE Broward on possible chopping block because they are less than 70% capacity: Hallandale High School, McNicol Middle School and Hollywood Central Elementary School.

There's a good but-not-perfect graph that was on a popular Broward public policy Facebook page that showed reasons that some Broward parents give for why they have -or may- pull their kids from the system. 

The official number given for so-called "lost" BCPS kids in the past 20 years is 58,000, but I suspect it is considerably higher since the very people who were NOT polled actually are the ones I'd like most to hear from in such a poll to know the truth: parents who fled Broward county ENTIRELY, and did not know of the poll.

Concerned Citizens of Broward County

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1801524496544974/

https://www.facebook.com/story.php/?id=1801524496544974&story_fbid=7541725325858167

Though this particular Facebook page is much more useful than most things online that have a South Florida emphasis, the truth is that is very noticeable that at certain times of the week -say on Sunday mornings and around midnight on weeknights Monday thru Thursday- it tends to have indignant and angry posts that are VERY heavily weighed and biased towards the long term interests and goals of the Broward Democratic Party and its activist allies, principally, teachers and their union friends, the Broward Teachers Union -the BTU.

The BTU expects that all Broward School Board candidates it endorses and who get elected to be faithful puppets and to always think as exactly as they are told, especially regarding salaries and pay raises.

That is, they believe that the answer to every problem in the school system, including why has Broward County lost 58,000 students over the past 20 years, is because teachers were not paid enough. Which is preposterous of course.

You can see for yourself below how their comments condescendingly dismiss all parents answers to simple questions about why they pulled/may pull their kids from the BCPS system, IF the answer isn't simply giving more $ to teachers.

We all know that parents in Broward County are NOT removing their children from the public schools and voting with their wallets/purses and feet by moving simply because of the level of salary individual teachers earn each year. Especially in a county where because of the efforts of Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature, the starting salary of a teacher in Broward County is $50,000, plus benefits, regardless of how poorly a teacher they may prove to be in their first year.

Here are the responses to the graph above, which make my larger point. 

Reality = Broward taxpayers interested in both solid academic improvement and financial efficiencies KNOW BCPS buildings and land WILL be sold, so the belief among self-serving, politically- driven #BTU and its members that honestly think that the number of teachers will or should remain the same is... DELUSIONAL. 

I'm NOT a fan of BTU's B.S.

As for tonight, I'm out-of-town, so I will NOT be able to attend the meeting in Pembroke Pines at Flanagan, the HS that my nephew graduated from 20 years ago.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article284879932.html

Miami Herald

Broward superintendent plans to close - or re-purpose - 5 public schools
February 4, 2024

Jimena Tavel; Staff Writer 

About four years ago, Walnite Denis moved from Miami Gardens to Pembroke Pines for her daughters.

"I moved to Broward to make sure they go to a good school," the Haitian immigrant said.

Her eldest now attends Pines Middle School at 200 Douglas Rd., and her youngest goes to Palm Cove Elementary School at 11601 Washington St. They're both gifted students.

She loves their schools, so she raised her eyebrows in surprise when she found out this week that one of them, Pines Middle, is one of the 67 most under-enrolled public schools in Broward County, possibly meaning the school district could close it or re-purpose it in coming months. Currently, Pines Middle has the capacity for 1,769 students, but it's missing 1,159 students - thus operating at a measly 34.5% of capacity.

Denis is exactly the type of person Broward Schools Superintendent Peter Licata wants to meet as he and his administration embark on one of the most challenging missions the school district has faced in years: closing or re-purposing at least five out of a total 239 schools in the 2025-2026 school year. Broward Schools is currently missing about 51,000 students, and the projections are bleak.

In total, 67 out of the total 239 schools in Broward - or 28% - are operating at 70% of their capacity or less.

"If you ask superintendents around the country, it's something they never want to do. It's incredibly challenging. But I can't look at it negatively; I want to look at it as an opportunity," Licata told the Herald in a recent interview. "It may not seem like an opportunity, but it is one. Remember, if we're spending money on things we don't have - like students - it takes away from teachers and bus drivers and cafeteria workers and others."

To hear opinions from parents, students, employees, business owners and others, the Broward school district will hold three town halls this month, open to anyone in the community:

6 p.m. Thursday at the Fort Lauderdale High School at 1600 NE 4th Ave. in Fort Lauderdale

6 p.m. Feb. 15 at the J.P. Taravella High School at 10600 Riverside Dr. in Coral Springs

6 p.m. Feb. 22 at the Charles W. Flanagan High School at 12800 Taft St. in Pembroke Pines

All the meeting dates are Thursdays, and the meetings will be live-streamed at www.becon.tv/redefining. The school district will also put out surveys to gather input.

Why are students leaving, and what are the options?

If you ask the top official at the Broward school district why families are fleeing his public schools, he will point to myriad reasons - and none for certain at the same time. Most leave from kindergarten to third grade, or from sixth to eighth grade, he said.

Families could have pulled students because they have opted for home-schooling instead, switched to charter or private schools, or moved out of the county or state because of the rising cost of living.

They could've also done it because they were seeking a specific magnet program at another school, because they disliked the staff or because that school's state-granted grade fell.

The county's shrinking birth rate, controversial state politics and the lack of families moving to Broward could also be triggering it.

All of that could be affecting the enrollment at Broward Public Schools, but he won't know for sure until he speaks to the people directly involved, he said.

That's why he refuses to put out a list of schools he's considering for possible changes, because he wants to keep an open mind, he said.

"There is no written list. There will be none. We all have something in our heads. We've looked at schools. But if we do that we've already tanked the process," he said.

He also wants to keep his options open, he said. For Licata, "close" or "re-purpose" aren't the only changes he could implement.

The district could also combine two under-enrolled schools to create an at-capacity elementary school or a K-8 center or 6-12 center.

The district could convert part of a school to provide another service, like a technical education or special education, medical or dental health care, workforce training, youth programming or recreational activities.

It could also lease or sell a property to address other needs, like affordable housing for underpaid teachers and others.

And it could also change the school attendance zone by adding or removing neighborhoods assigned to a specific school.

If a school does close, the district will reassign students to another.

Bargaining agreements with teachers and other groups will mandate what happens to the employees of a school that closes; they would be likely to fill in the gaps at other schools or follow students if schools are combines.

To decide what to do ultimately, Licata intends to rely on data - data like the list of the 67 under-enrolled schools using less than 70% of their capacity, enrollment numbers for surrounding private and charter schools, enrollment projections, academic performance and facilities' status.

The timeline, sensitivity the superintendent foresees

Because of two controversial previous moves since the summer, Licata said he wants to get this right.

In August, Broward Schoolsreversed a decision to require all students to use only clear backpacks after people protested it. Similarly, in December, the Broward School Board killed a proposal to start its own police force after the public strongly rejected it.

That's why with the "re-defining" of schools, as he calls it, Licata says he wants to be intentional. He's allotting about 18 months for the process to play out, keeping in mind, he said, that it will be a sensitive topic because it may involve changing historical facilities, boundaries and family traditions.

Alongside the February town halls, Licata will gather with city mayors and managers, county commissioners and other public officials to get their feedback.

He will also reach out to leaders of places of worship.

"Places of worship are very important for communities. They're places where you can get authentic feedback. And a lot of the traditions in history exist in places of worship, and in this county, there are a lot of traditions, and historical names and facilities that we really want to make sure we respect as we move through," Licata said. "We can't just go into neighborhoods, and tell them, 'Yeah, we own the property.' Everyone owns the property, so we want to be very sensitive to the community. That's why we want to listen to them."

On March 20, Licata plans to meet with the Broward School Board to get more direction. He also scheduled another board workshop for May 14.

He doesn't "foresee" taking any decision that affects students in the 2024-2025 school year, he said. Instead, he said the district will focus on selling excess land and, if needed, changing boundary limits, which he's "99.9%" sure he'll need to do.

In the 2025-2026 school year, the district would make changes affecting at least five schools, which he said could be painful.

"The schools belong to the community, and they're historical places," Licata said. "If all of a sudden we say, 'Hey, we're closing this school,' people go, 'Wait a minute, I went here. My mother went here. My kids go here. That's where they're supposed to go; how could you do this?' That's the sensitive part of it."

"We learned a lot when we brought up the potential police force," he added. "We learned we need to communicate even more. So our goal is that nobody, nobody, in 18 months is able to say, 'I didn't know about this.'"

Miami Herald
'Tough conversations': Broward school district hosts its first input event on school changes
Jimena Tavel, Staff Writer
February 12, 2024

While scrolling social media Wednesday night, Cathy Curry, 61, saw a list of the most under-enrolled schools in Broward County Public Schools and one caught her eye: her alma mater Hallandale High School, the same majority-Black school that, in 1974, she and her mother marched in protest to get the district to open.

She saw that the district could close it because it's operating at only 64% of its capacity. She panicked.

"I was so hurt I couldn't sleep," Curry, who graduated from the high school in 1980, told the Miami Herald.

The following day, on Thursday, she decided to attend a district event on the topic at Fort Lauderdale High School. That was the first of three events that Broward school district officials have planned to seek community input on a plan to close or repurpose at least five out of the district's total of 239 schools in the 2025-2026 school year. They say the district must make changes because it has lost about 58,000 students in the past 20 years.

Instead of holding a traditional town hall Thursday, district officials held small-group conversations.

First, Superintendent of Broward Public Schools Peter Licata briefly explained why the district needs to affect at least five schools. Then officials split the roughly 150 in-person attendees inside the school's auditorium - and the about 200 who tuned in to the live stream online - into eight groups and directed them to different areas such as classrooms and the cafeteria. They assigned a facilitator to lead and survey each group using an artificial intelligence platform called ThoughtExchange.

Facilitators asked each group two questions using ThoughtExchange and then led a discussion about all of the groups' answers, which they could see and rate up or down online.

The first was, "When the District decides to close or combine schools, what should we think about the most. What considerations are most important and why?"

Some of the answers included bus schedules and transportation concerns, the well-being of children, maintaining or improving the quality of the education, increasing targeted programs for specific careers in the future, the overall fiscal impact to the district and the classroom sizes.

The second question was, "How can we make changing schools a positive experience for students, teachers, and the community to help our schools become the best they can be?"

Those answers featured statements like "infrastructure is key," "increasing mental health for students," and "pay the teachers a decent wage."

The first question upset Curry.

"To see that felt like the decision is already made, and it's disingenuous to gather the community here," she said.

Zoie Saunders, the district's chief strategy and innovation officer, was facilitating Curry's group and apologized for that. She later told the Herald that the original question was too long and in the editing process, it lost some clarity.

"I completely acknowledged that was a mistake," Saunders said. "We'll try to wordsmith that question for the future."

Overall, Licata, who walked in and out of all of the group settings, told the Herald after the event that he thought it had gone well.

"I thought tonight was pretty good," he said. "We had some really good conversations; we had some really tough conversations. ... It was the first night. We're going to redirect some things, fix some things. We are going to address what people have said. We're listening."

Complaints with format, use of AI

Others in Curry's group raised concerns about the district's logistics for the event.

Narnike Pierre Grant, the mother of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School freshman and the chair of the school district's diversity committee, said she disliked being divided into small groups.

"I wasn't happy with the format. I don't think it was conducive for the people in this district," said Pierre Grant. "When they were advertising it, they made it feel like a town hall, and that's not what it was. It was hard for people who aren't technologically savvy."

In response, Licata said the district never called the event a "town hall meeting." The official district web page and the flyer describe the events as "Community Conversations." But he acknowledged that the district can hammer that point more in the future.

Overall, he said he understands that there's a history of mistrust in the school district and that that might affect some perspectives.

"We know we have to build trust. This is new to this district, and I'm new to this district. It will take time," he said.

Similarly to Pierre Grant, one of the teachers who attended Thursday, Erica Hansinger from Western High School in Davie, felt that the district could have surveyed people at home instead of in person. And that the use of AI didn't foster "deep, raw conversations."

After the group members answered the two questions, they got to up-vote or down-vote other attendees' ideas. At the end, the platform produced a "summary" with conclusions about what the people said, which the facilitator read out loud.

"That's not the way to engage the community," said Hansinger, who's been teaching for 20 years. "I was baffled. It was bizarre."

After the group stopped looking down at their devices in Hansinger and Pierre Grant's group, they started chatting. A woman shared that she had experienced trauma back in 1995 when the district rezoned some schools and she lost all of her friends; she said she didn't want her own children to experience that, too.

"Her story touched me," Hansinger said, pointing out that the woman wouldn't have been able to share that emotion and those details online on ThoughtExchange and that the format possibly hindered others from sharing their own tales.

In response to that, Saunders said the district decided to use the platform to collect more data and spark ideas. She said that it's not over-relying on its results, as it will also consider other factors when deciding what schools to change: factors including enrollment, neighborhood demographics and the condition of each facility.

The next two district events will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday at the J.P. Taravella High School at 10600 Riverside Dr. in Coral Springs and at 6 p.m. Feb. 22, which is also a Thursday, at the Charles W. Flanagan High School at 12800 Taft St. in Pembroke Pines.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article285429077.html

Miami Herald
‘Let's look at the root causes': Community weighs in on potential Broward school closures
Jimena Tavel, Miami Herald
February 16, 2024

Anabelle Rivera moved from Miami Shores to Weston in 2021 in hopes that a Broward public school could help her autistic son. She had tried three private schools in Miami-Dade and disliked them all.

"To my surprise it was better," she said. "We are in a much better place now but it took a lot of work. It took a lot of conversations between me as an interested and informed parent and staff."

Then recently, the mom of a seventh grader at Tequesta Trace Middle School found out the Broward school district will close or repurpose at least five schools of its total 239 schools in the 2025-26 school year. She decided to attend a Thursday community meeting hosted by the school district to discuss those plans.

Rivera was one of about 75 people who went in person to J.P. Taravella High School in Coral Springs; about 50 others tuned in online.

The event was the second in a series of three. The first event took place Feb. 8 at Fort Lauderdale High School, and attracted about 150 in person and about 200 others online. The last event is planned for 6 p.m. Feb. 22 at Charles W. Flanagan High School in Pembroke Pines.

Like the first event, Broward Schools Superintendent Peter Licata began Thursday with a presentation in the school's auditorium that explained the district must change because it has lost about 58,000 students in the last 20 years. After, the attendees got divided into five groups and sent to different classrooms.

In the small breakout group that Rivera was in, about 20 people sat in a semicircle. Two facilitators asked questions and led the discussion, using an artificial intelligence surveying program called ThoughtExchange.

They first asked a question about what challenges and opportunities of closing or repurposing some schools.

Rivera, the mother of the autistic son, said she hopes that the district takes the chance to add more resources to students with disabilities like her son. She also said that she has a daughter, a senior at a charter school in Wynwood that focuses on the arts, who has thrived there because she's developed her singing, and Broward public schools should replicate those types of program in all fields.

"I'm hopeful," she said.

A woman said the district will struggle to regain the public's trust, an issue largely rooted in a failed 2014 tax payer-approved $800 million project to fix schools, called the SMART bond.

Another woman said that it would be a problem if people lose their jobs in the process.

Aiykiera Brown, a senior at Millennium Collegiate Academy in Tamarac, said she worried students' mental health would suffer if they were removed from their comfort zones and separated from their friends.

"You could have a lot of students drop out," she said.



Then facilitators repeated the two questions from the first event on ThoughtExhange.

First: "When the District decides to close or combine schools, what should we think about the most. What considerations are most important and why?"

Those answers largely led the group to wonder why students were leaving in the first place. A woman worried that if the district doesn't identify the underlying causes and fix them, repurposing or closing some schools would be a "Band-Aid solution."

"So then the plan is what? To keep closing schools?" she said.

Joi Calderon, the mother of a junior at J.P. Taravella and an eighth grader at Ramblewood Middle in Coral Springs, agreed with that. She wondered if the Broward school district has looked at charter and private schools and analyzed why people are choosing those over the traditional public schools.

"Is it a community thing? Is it a cultural thing? Is it a location thing? I don't know," she said. "But let's look at the root causes, because if not we're going to keep losing students."

Calderon also said the district should set ways to measure success quickly in each of its decisions. Whether the district decides to close a school, combine two under-enrolled schools, convert part of a school to provide another service like a technical education, change the school attendance zone or implement any other idea, the district should monitor how that's going and pivot with agility if needed, she said.

"How are they going to reassess, and how are they going to make decisions to say, ‘Yes, we need to move forward with this' or ‘No, we need to retract it. Let's try this instead?'" she said.


The second question facilitators asked the group — "How can we make changing schools a positive experience for students, teachers, and the community to help our schools become the best they can be?" — elicited some ideas.

A man suggested the school district hold more meetings in low-income neighborhoods to reach people who may have not been able to travel to the three designated locations. Or alternatively, he said, the district could offer free transportation from across the county to the last event.

Another man said he used to work for the school district as a lawn maintenance operator and knows the district owns a lot of land in Broward. He wondered if instead of spending money on constantly cutting grass and maintaining empty lots, the district could sell of lease them.

"You know what 50 acres can go for?" he said. "3.4 million."

Dave

David Bruce Smith  


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