Showing posts with label Broward County. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Broward County. Show all posts

Thursday, February 22, 2024

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


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


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.



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

Monday, November 6, 2023

re Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody's office fighting a ruling on lobbying restrictions on Florida's elected officials: The cautionary tale of Steve Geller and Joe Gibbons track record makes a reasonable person realize we NEED even stronger and more meaningful ethics laws in the Sunshine State



re Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody's office fighting a ruling on lobbying restrictions on Florida's elected officials: The cautionary tale of Steve Geller and Joe Gibbons track record makes a reasonable person realize we NEED even stronger and more meaningful ethics laws in the Sunshine State 

As I have told most of you loyal readers of the blog via emails or in-person since before 2018 -some of you, in fact, SEVERAL TIMES!- I truly wish the Florida law mentioned last week in Florida Trend, below, had been a state law in effect back when: 

a.) Present-day Broward County Commissioner Steve Geller was a state senator, with a public office located at Hallandale Beach City Hall no less.
In theory if not practice, Geller was supposed to be representing the citizens and stakeholders of Hallandale Beach in the Florida state Senate in Tallahassee, yet at the time, was free to legally lobby AGAINST their interests -as well as those of HB's elected officials- on behalf of any of his lobbying clients, and,

b.) Joe Gibbons, the ex-Hallandale Beach City Commissioner and then-Florida state Representative -so, like Steve Geller above, in theory, representing the interests of citizens and small business owners of Hallandale Beach and West Park in the Florida House of Representatives in Tallahassee- yet, Gibbons was legally free to lobby AGAINST the interests of the city's residents, stakeholders and elected officials, on behalf of his other clients. And did.

Clients that Hallandale Beach citizens and stakeholders were completely unaware of, even if a particular project he was somehow financially involved in was being discussed on local TV newscasts or in the Miami Herald or South Florida Sun Sentinel, since unless his name is specifically mentioned, how would you know he was connected to it?
You wouldn't.

In one particular egregious case regarding Joe Gibbons WHILE he was a Florida state Representative, a case that I chronicled here on the blog MANY TIMES at the time, Gibbons was working FOR the interests of a large, well-heeled South Florida real estate development company involving a VERY UNPOPULAR development proposal on the beach. Specifically, one proposed for 2000 S. Ocean Drive.
What is now referred to as 2000 Ocean, below.





A proposed development that was opposed by both the city residents living closest to it, at the Parker Plaza condos, as well as the majority of the rest of the community.




The latter, a reflection of the fact that the city's elected officials, City Manager and CRA officials seemed even more intent than usual in bending over and rushing the project through with as little public engagement and input, and handicapping the public by NOT making PUBLIC INFORMATION available to me and them as soon as it was available.
(Yes, not only the common thread but actually the default position of Hallandale Beach elected officials and City Managers since I first returned to South Florida 20 years ago, after working and living in Washington, D.C. for roughly 15 years, often on behalf of some of the largest of Fortune 500 companies, and the nation's most influential law firms, PACs and lobbying groups.)

Typically for Broward County pols, where no interest looms larger than self-interest, Joe Gibbons did all of this while he was running against first-term incumbent Beam Furr for his Broward County Commission seat representing SE Broward County, including Hollywood. 
If you were a normal person, you'd think that the issue would have caused the South Florida news media to be all over it, given that it was happening while Gibbons was campaigning for public office again.
But you'd be wrong.

As I wrote about many times here on the blog, absolutely ZERO members of South Florida's press corps, print or TV or even NPR affiliate WLRN, were interested in asking any hard questions about that particular arrangement, despite the unethical optics of it, to say nothing of the huge amount Gibbons reportedly would have received if he had succeeded: $200,000 according to well-informed people involved in the process.

And the worst part of all, a FACT that I wrote about then on my blog and in emails to many of you, Gibbons NEVER even did the bare minimum the city's extant ethics and lobbying laws REQUIRED.

That is, Gibbons never filed the required lobbying docs at HB City Hall, as every other lobbyist is required to do, yet he had many conversations with City Commissioners and top city staffers at the time, including several with unethical Comm. Anthony Sanders, a man who later was forced out by Broward Inspector General John Scott because of Sanders steering nearly a million dollars in HB CRA funds to his family and friends, naturally, because the city was unwilling and unable to do even the most basic oversight of the millions of dollars in the city's CRA pot.
(For the record, the Miami Herald has STILL never reported in-print that he was forced to resign -or else!)

That Joe Gibbons, who lived in Jacksonville with his family while he was a state Representative, while claiming, falsely, to be a full-time bona fide Hallandale Beach resident, was a great believer of rules for you and me, but NOT for him. Surprise!

Even now we STILL don't know who the real priorities of Steve Geller and Joe Gibbons were when they were public officials in Tallahassee or Broward County: the public or their own financial interests?




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NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
Florida attorney general's office fights a ruling on a lobbying restriction
Jim Saunders | The News Service of Florida | 10/26/2023

Pointing to securing the “public trust,” Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office has asked a federal appeals court to overturn a decision that blocked part of a 2018 state constitutional amendment imposing new restrictions
on lobbying.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom this summer issued a permanent injunction against a restriction on state and local officials lobbying other government bodies while in office. Bloom said the restriction violated First Amendment rights.

But in a 62-page brief filed Wednesday at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers in Moody’s office disputed that the restriction is unconstitutional and said paid “lobbying by public officials threatens the integrity of and public confidence in democracy.”

Florida’s restriction alleviates the threat of financial quid pro quos and their appearance in a direct and material way,” the brief said. “It prevents elected and executive-level officers, who wield political influence, from taking, or appearing to take, dollars … for political favors … in derogation of public trust.”

The 2018 amendment, which was proposed by the state Constitution Revision Commission, sought to bar public officials from lobbying “for compensation on issues of policy, appropriations, or procurement before the federal government, the Legislature, any state government body or agency, or any political subdivision of this state, during his or her term of office.”

The remaining plaintiff in the case is Miami-Dade County Commissioner Rene Garcia, after Bloom ruled that another plaintiff, South Miami Mayor Javier Fernandez, did not have legal standing.

Garcia, a former state House member and senator, is executive vice president of New Century Partnership, a firm that provides lobbying and other services. Garcia said he turned down at least two clients who sought lobbying services for legislative appropriations in Tallahassee because of the restriction, according to Bloom’s ruling.

In the filing Wednesday, Moody’s office took issue with the injunction applying to officials across the state. The brief said that if Bloom’s ruling is upheld, it should apply only to Garcia.

“Because Garcia’s injury is limited to the fear of enforcement against him, the court could have afforded complete relief by enjoining the state defendants from enforcing the restriction against only him,” the brief said. “By enjoining the restriction as to all public officers in the state, the district court departed from traditional equitable practice.”

Bloom, who is based in South Florida, ruled that the 2018 constitutional amendment and a law that carried it out placed “content-based, overbroad restrictions on speech.”

“Contrary to defendants’ assertion, the in-office restrictions target speech based on the context of the speech and its content,” Bloom wrote.

But the state’s brief Wednesday said that “no matter the public office or the lobbied government entity making political decisions, Florida has a substantial interest in preventing officeholders from being (or appearing to be) bought and paid for in the political arena while holding public office in public trust.”

Bloom did not block another part of the voter-approved amendment that restricts former state and local officials from lobbying for six years after leaving office.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Eight months into the school year -8!- Broward Police Departments have yet to be reimbursed $ for SRO's by the Broward School Board 😳. SNAFU.



Broward school district has yet to reimburse police departments for resource officers
Hatzel Vela, Reporter
Published: March 28, 2023 at 5:33 PM
Updated: March 29, 2023 at 6:51 AM

I'll be updating this post later today with more facts, insight and anecdotes that help you wrap your head around this latest problem at a place that's had more problems than solutions the past 20 years. 

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

The news story hiding in plain sight is often news that #SoFL newsrooms simply have no interest in covering, whether fairly or with bias. In any case, Rod Velez's legal qualifications to serve on Broward School Board will soon come to a head, as Gov. DeSantis may again have to replace an elected official in Broward County

The news story hiding in plain sight is often news that #SoFL media newsrooms simply have no interest in covering, whether fairly or with bias. In any case, Rod Velez's legal qualifications to take office on Broward School Board will come to a head soon, as Gov. DeSantis may again have to replace an elected official in Broward County.



For several weeks since the August 23rd primary election, the talk among Broward's political chattering class -and in the South Florida news media, to the the extent it ever appeared- had been about whether or not Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would AGAIN remove Donna Korn if she won the Broward School Board At-Large seat that was the subject of a runoff race last Tuesday vs. Allen Zeman

Their race, which Zeman won 51% to 49%, was the subject of a recent large group email blast of mine as well as a subsequent blog post here on Oct. 19th.

The Korn Conundrum: Broward School Board At-Large candidate Donna Korn, who's already been removed by Gov. Ron DeSantis bec of a Grand Jury's recommendations, remains unpopular with the public and unable to defend her track record. But her opponent, Allen Zeman, is not just someone who is largely unknown, but has a troubling history of claiming things to be true that are NOT. Of actually lying with impunity. What should Broward County voters do?

https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-korn-conundrum-broward-school-board.html

But while that subject generated at least some attention, what had NOT been discussed publicly in the 1,001 ways that you would expect or anticipate for a subject as serious as whether or not a candidate was even qualified to run for elected office, were many facts coming to light via myriad stories and rumors re Broward School Board District 1 Rod Velez, and his eligibility status to represent Hallandale Beach, Hollywood and Dania Beach if he was, in fact, elected, as a result of a prior felony conviction.

Things first began to dribble out a few weeks ago from his opponent in the runoff, Marie Murray Martin, the daughter of former District One incumbent Ann Murray, who was one of the four School Board members removed in late August by DeSantis, who was running to replace her mother. 

Using her Facebook campaign page and other Social Media of her mother, friends and supporters in SE Broward and elsewhere, Martin was successfully able to get uncorroborated information about Velez into the sunshine and online that local Miami and Fort Lauderdale- based news media had ignored reporting publicly in the ways that, well, they have literally patented over the past 25 years.

(As I have written since starting this blog in 2007, having previously lived in Chicago and Washington, D.C. and knowing dozens of well-known Beltway journalists, columnists and 
editors at top-tier news organizations well enough to go to ball games, movies with them, or, attend barbecues at their homes, no media market in the USA more avidly ignores reporting 
more stories of public interest and consideration than the South Florida news media, print and TV. They think that TOO!
Too many "reporters" here act like wannabe-corporate publicists for the powerful, affluent and influential, not curious investigative reporters, or, at least semi-skeptical representatives of the public pushing back consistently against the taxpayer-paid PIOs of South Florida about what is fact and what is fantasy.) 

That is to say, Marie Murray Martin ran to replace her mother on the Broward School Board dais WITHOUT ever speaking publicly or in-person at any event in Hollywood or Hallandale Beach the past few months about all the many ethics and corruption questions surrounding her mother for the past 12 years, to say nothing of the ones about her mother's consistently poor judgment and inability and unwillingness to tell the truth to area parents.
Or, to even look them in face without Murray having lots of BTU members around her -or Robert Runcie in tow- to run interference and keep the public quiet.

Ann Murray was notorious for being a no-show at education events in Hallandale Beach the past 16 years -even before she ran and got elected- as I have always been quick to remind readers here and my Followers on my Twitter feed, @hbbtruth

As you regular readers of the blog know well, ethically-challenged Ann Murray has been the subject of DOZENS of fact-filled and and photo-filled posts on this blog over the time she has been an embarrassing hand grenade of an elected official, always ready to explode in the faces of residents, parents and stakeholders in this area who want better quality education oversight and accountability.

A week before the election, perhaps sensing that the race was perhaps getting away from her, not surprisingly, a dam broke and a wall of unflattering information about Velez came gushing out, most of which was not independently corroborated. Little wonder where that was coming from, given the glaring apathy of the South Florida news media.


Now, in the days since the election where Velez won 52%-47%, there's finally some reporting.
Some, not much, and to be honest, WLRN radio barely counts.
Once upon a time it might've, especially before the pandemic, but that was YEARS ago.

When I lived and worked in Washington, D.C. from 1988-2003, I listened to NPR's D.C. affiliate, WAMU 91.3 FM, on average about 8 hours a day, Monday thru Friday.
That was largely because I was in an office setting most of the day when I wasn't in a meeting, over on Capitol Hill for a hearing or meeting or doing some handholding of a client over there or some nearby bar or restaurant.
But since I returned to South Florida, well, WLRN has become far too too smarmy, dupliitous, stridently liberal, and too predictable.
Even worse in my opinion, far too incurious or unwilling to challenge the Democratic government orthodoxy that has so badly served the public here for so long in ways large and small, whether housing, transportation, ethics, or business development.

These days, WLRN is more more like NPR's Junior Varsity, and their JV B team at that, with the same likes and dislikes, and the same fetishizing of some subjects and places beyond anything that makes sense. That is, if it's in Wynwood it gets on air, Hallandale Beach or Hollywood, no chance.
No chance at all!

WLRN is actually worse than Tampa Bay's NPR station, WUSF-FM, where they at least try to have someone on once in a while with an alternative POV.
Here, it's always the same names and same voices saying the same things that make no sense.
 


Now there's some informed talk among some usually-informed people here and in Tallahassee that Gov. DeSantis could simply say that the rules are the rules, and remove Velez and say that he was not in compliance with Florida law regarding former felons voting and being legally qualified to run for office.
Then, presumably, replace Velez with an interim person until another election can take place in a few months, since saying that he broke the law and leaving him in place is even more problematic for a guy like DeSantis, who clearly does not like unnecessary drama that can go sideways.

Here's a snapshot of some of what was going on this weekend while you were watching the Dolphins big 39-16 win against the Cleveland Browns or otherwise staying away from local politics and government.








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