By: Sharon Aron Baron
The City has been very sneaky about building a new Charter High School in town. They say it’s wanted and needed, but by who?
JP Taravella, Coral Glades, Piper and even Stoneman Douglas are all under-enrolled and are all listed as schools currently accepting reassignments for the 2015-2016 school year.
The proposal for a new charter high school was casually slipped into a workshop agenda seeking RFP (request for proposals) without even line-itemizing it. The city manager brought this up on the January 21, 2014 workshop agenda as item number seven, which wasn’t on the agenda, nor was it ever amended to include this item, and if you weren’t paying attention you would have missed it. If you watch the video available online, you’ll see the discussion.
It seems the city manager was quite prepared to bring the item forward for discussion as well, which means there was probably enough time for it to be added. Maybe then, the public could have known about it.
Anyway, the commission wants Tamarac to have its own high school because they believe our city needs a high school.
At the candidate forum in October, Michelle Gomez said the city had asked for another school in the past, but the Broward Schools denied them. Their reasoning was they were not building any new schools anywhere in the county. However, she mentions times have changed and we are starting to have more and more children. How can we possibly be having more children in our city if our city isn’t really growing? Where are these children coming from?
She mentions that they put out an RFP so the RFP could decide. Well, you don’t let an RFP decide. The commission decides. Of course if you throw out a worm, the fish is going to take the bait.
It just boggles my mind. No facts, no numbers. They just want it. They want another school. It doesn’t matter that if a school is under-enrolled after the first 20-day period that some teachers get fired. Do they realize this? The number of teachers in a public school is contingent on the number of students attending that school. Say we take more students away from JP Taravella, then more teachers are fired. Thanks Tamarac!
As if the public doesn’t feel any more left out, I received this letter that only coaches are invited to a special meeting with the City of Tamarac regarding this now middle/high school.
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What is going on?
Do we really need a Charter High School? Why is it so close to Kings Point, a senior community? Why does our city want a school of their own so badly? Not one commission member has a child in public school and our own city manager doesn’t even have his kids in Tamarac schools. Why here?
Are they going to build it first, then justify the numbers and the reasons, because that’s a lousy way to take State dollars away from other Broward public schools that are doing just fine and fund a Charter School which most if not many are for-profit anyway.
Does anyone even care what’s going on in City Hall? Or do the only care about decking their own halls?
