Category: Tampa Bay

It was not a good week for the Hillsborough County School District.

It began with the embattled principal of Alafia Elementary, Ellyn Smith, stepping down. She had her detractors and defenders, but ultimately the divisiveness at Alafia became a morale-sapping distraction impossible to overcome. That sorry soap opera is now over.

While that controversy has been quelled, another — arguably more disturbing — question arises. Smith is a veteran of the Hillsborough system. Her tenure has been marked by outstanding evaluations and promotions.

And yet, despite 34 years of experience, Smith had to be “mentored” and “coached” by a former principal for the two weeks prior to her announcement to leave. The mentor/coach was there at the suggestion of a school effectiveness assessment team that had reviewed the school in response to parents’ complaints about Smith. The mentor/coach’s responsibilities included helping Smith work on her personal interaction with teachers and parents.

And the coach/mentor, Grace Ippolito, was paid $340 per diem for her work. Smith was also slated for leadership training at Eckerd College that would have cost the county $4,500. What budget cuts?

So the key query is this: How do you get 34 years into your professional career – with a track record of positive evaluations and promotions – and still need a mentor/coach?  And more specifically, who did the evaluating? Who did the promoting? Who determined the criteria? And who is still perpetuating this system?

Another incident was worse. Much worse.

Christina Butler, a former Middleton High School special education teacher, was sentenced for having sex multiple times with one of her students. It brought back into public consciousness — aided by the media — all the other nefarious cases. May we never become inured to this sort of disgusting betrayal of trust.

The shock, however, was Butler’s actual sentence: five years of probation. Even more startling was Hillsborough Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett’s rationale. He noted that the victim, 16 and borderline retarded, was probably more mature and less vulnerable than Butler, 33. Padgett saw the student as more seducer than “victim.”

By contrast, he saw the defendant as immature, frightened and fragile – a bipolar woman who had been in way over her head by being in charge of high school students.

He took pity on her, which is his, however controversial, prerogative.

Butler has those five years of probation and can no longer teach.

Which begs two questions:

*Butler, as a registered sex offender, can’t teach. But can she learn anything from this sordid ordeal and do something constructive with her life?

*Granted, special education teachers are at a premium everywhere. With good reason. The field requires teachers with discipline, empathy and the right skill set, including diagnostic, for reaching and motivating a school’s most challenging learners. It’s the worst of all pedagogical places for the fragile and the incompetent.

So, how much lower can the bar get in Hillsborough for hiring special education teachers? Might not psychological screenings, which are not part of the background-checking process, be especially applicable for this field?

            Harris Mullen was one of those people who you wished you had known better, but felt privileged to have known at all. As a business writer and a magazine editor, I had some entrée into Mullen’s milieu.

            The word is overused, but he was a visionary. He focused on business as a publication commodity before it was Florida fashionable; he started Florida Trend magazine. He developed Ybor Square. He saw the Tampa streetcar as an economic development tool and light-rail starter. He was a natural resource for Tampa Bay.

            And to his core, Harris Mullen was the consummate gentleman.

It wasn’t a good week for University of Tampa alums. Two of them were prominent in the national news: suspected mobster John Alite, 46, and disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, 52. Alite attended UT in the 1980s; Blagojevich in the late ‘70s.

The United States allows more jury trials than any other country in the world. Its local impact: About 130,000 jury members are needed each year in Hillsborough County.

            Periodically, your number is up and you’re called. Many of you know the routine. Few relish the opportunity to decide another’s fate. And nobody likes the more likely scenario of sheer boredom that waiting around induces. 

The time-hangs-heavy ambience of the jury auditorium at downtown Tampa’s George E. Edgecomb Courthouse is no exception. After Channel 28’s Brendan McLaughlin overviews it all for you on video, lots of down time ensues. That means lots of reading — occasionally interspersed with toneless announcements that cull more voir dire prospects.

            And then came a different voice with a different message.

            It was decidedly unbureaucratic and belonged to an amiable blonde in a blue business suit, Yvonne Marrone. She is the volunteer recruiter and community outreach coordinator for the Guardian ad Litem Program for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit. A Guardian ad Litem is appointed by the court to advocate for a child, most of whom have been removed from their homes because of alleged abuse, abandonment or neglect.

Marrone was making her rounds, but she was also making an impassioned pitch. The need is critical, she underscored, for more volunteers to be the voices for Florida’s neediest children.

            Now there, I thought, was smart marketing.

Excluding the incarcerated, this had to be the ultimate captive audience. And yet this was also an eclectic cross section of folks that couldn’t or didn’t try to get out of jury duty. And while this room of several hundred wasn’t necessarily the embodiment of civic idealism, it was a venue where the theme of community awareness and responsibility was ever present.

Marrone recruits “anywhere and everywhere,” she said. From print media and personal references to civic clubs, retiree communities, college criminal justice classes and blood banks. Among her most successful venues is the courthouse.

“Overall, our presentations at jury pool give us amazing exposure and create some dialogue,” explained Marrone.

Marrone takes a recruiting dip in the jury pool twice a week every week. The results have been encouraging. She averages 15-20 prospects – who take information and fill out forms – a month. On average, two or three sign up for training classes and become official Guardian ad Litem volunteers.

Right now there are 370 active volunteers to spread among some 1,400 children. Approximately 400 children are now awaiting a volunteer. Hillsborough County’s per-capita needs are more acute than any other county in Florida, lamented Marrone. And who knows what may happen if across-the-board budget cuts are enacted in Tallahassee.

“We have that many cases,” she said. “It’s kind of sad.”

And frustrating, even for the buoyant Marrone.

“It’s easy to stand on the outside and criticize the system,” she pointed out. “But our children are our future. When you volunteer, you’re saying to a child, ‘I care about you.’                                                             

“And these children see that. They see people who don’t have to care, who care anyhow. Often the Guardian ad Litem volunteer is the most consistent person in their life.”                                                         

This day about a dozen jury poolers filed back to a small anteroom to meet with Marrone.

She explained that the Guardian ad Litem program was not a “field-trip organization.” Indeed, it was about juvenile dependency cases and protecting the rights of children and advocating in their best interest. The volunteer Guardian ad Litem makes independent recommendations to the court – based on a child’s history, environment, relationships and, ultimately, needs. The volunteer also monitors the situation – to verify whether the orders of the court – and the plans of the Department of Children and Families – are being carried out.

“Their input in invaluable,” emphasized Marrone. “Our guardians are respected by the judges.”

The guardians put in between eight and 12 hours a month on average, estimated Marrone. That includes visitations, reports and (participation in) court hearings.

For those who opt to sign on, 30 hours of certification training await. That means 10 three-hour (6-9 p.m.) sessions — next available from Jan. 8 to Feb. 10, 2009. They are held at Christ the King Catholic Church in South Tampa. After that, volunteers are assigned to a supervisor. Provisions for volunteer requests – for example, a specific age or age range – can be accommodated.

And not that Marrone doesn’t have enough challenges. One more. January 8 is the BCS National Championship Game between Florida and Oklahoma.

“We promise to have you out as quickly as possible that first night,” Marrone assured all her listeners.

For further information, please contact Marrone at 272-5110 or at [email protected]. There’s also a website, www.guardianadlitem.org, which includes an on-line application.

           Here’s hoping that when the Hillsborough County School Board meets next month, it will vet the recommendation of a committee of parents and educators that the county eliminate religious holidays beginning in 2009-10.

            Recall last year’s fiasco when classes were held, so to speak, on Good Friday. A majority of students and 40 per cent of bus drivers were no-shows. This year Good Friday falls during spring break, so the religious-holiday bullet is dodged.

But next school year will be the test. The school board should heed the committee’s advice and then plan accordingly – including acting like responsible, sectarian adults who are staying the non-religious-holiday course and managing all parties’ expectations.

            That means, among other things, acknowledging that this is not about religious insensitivity. Or selective intolerance. In truth, it’s about treating all religions equally. None will get their own holiday. And, candidly, who is to say — from animists to atheists — who else would have been queuing in that “give-us-our-religious-holiday-too” line?

            And here’s another suggestion: Rethink “Fair Day.”

            How do you make the case that you — as a school board — are to be taken seriously on such a sensitive, multi-cultural issue when you annually free up students to opt for dunk tanks, ferris wheels and corn dogs in lieu of school?

            But if you must keep the date, then, at least, re-label it. How about “Respecting Everyone’s Religion Day.” Observe it in your own way. In a church. At a mosque. At a synagogue. At home. At the County Fair.

            Good Friday? How about Much Better Friday?

The scene could have adorned the cover of the old Saturday Evening Post. It was that Norman Rockwellian.

Beaming parents, cherubic kids and compliant pets packed the outdoor plaza of South Tampa’s Hyde Park Village. Young ballerinas and music from The Nutcracker was the center of attention. There would be a Santa sighting before it was over.

No one talked of (HPV owner) Wasserman scenarios and turbulent times for retail. What Gator game?

The focus was kids and Christmas: a never-more-important constant in a world undergoing unprecedented change.

            The silver lining in the jobs-lost numbers is that the Hillsborough County School District can be pickier about teachers it hires for high-need subjects such as math, science, reading and exceptional education. There will be more candidates coming out of private-sector areas hit especially hard by a recessionary economy.

            “We are in a position where we can be more selective,” underscored Quincenia Bell, Hillsborough’s teacher recruiter.

            But then she added this disclaimer: “Some of the applicants are not education majors. Their challenge is to convince that principal that even though they didn’t go to school to teach, that they can teach.”

            A couple of points.

            First, not being an education major shouldn’t be viewed as a handicap. To the contrary. Not being burdened with bunches of common-sense psychology and methodology courses – at the expense of actual, subject-area mastery – should be considered a net plus.

            There’s a reason colleges of education are not, in general, highly regarded within the university academy. They are better known for their diversity models than for their academic rigor. They are more hire ed than higher ed.

            Second, what’s far more relevant is what a person has learned during the course of their ongoing Real Life seminar – and how well that translates to a real classroom with real, contemporary challenges.

            Here’s the sort of criteria that any prospective teacher should be measured by: 

            *Do they know their stuff? Do they have serious expertise in their subject area?

            *Do they genuinely enjoy working with young people? Can they reasonably accommodate to the popular culture? Mr. Chips need not apply.

            *Do they have the right personality fit?

>Are they comfortable being the responsible adult in charge of kids?    

   Discipline is a by-product. Deb Lafave  need not re-apply.

                        > Are they enthusiastic? Ben Stein roll-calling “Buehler, Buehler…” need

                            not be reprised.

                        > Do they have a sense of humor – including the self-deprecating variety?

            And if so — so what that they didn’t have Ed. Psych. 101?  

            I’m not going to get too involved in the public art debate about John Henry’s 33-foot tall “Big Max” sculpture on display at MacDill Park along the riverfront in downtown Tampa.

            When it comes to most modern art, including public sculptures, I’m a card-carrying philistine. I can’t even pretend to get it. Is “Big Max” an oversized anti-tank barrier? Or a gigantic version of what some Filipino pilgrim will carry through the streets of Manila on Good Friday? Or merely a slyly successful forum to get us all conjecturing?

            But I will say this. After decades of neglect and misuse of the Tampa riverfront, it’s been gratifying to see a progressive, aesthetic plan finally underway. Museums and parks and energizing, complementary commercial enterprises.

            But “Big Max” on the waterfront?

            At least put it on the Trump Tower lot, where it can divert attention from the art of the deal.

           The presidential election is over and an electoral mandate has been rendered. But for a lot of those grass-roots legions that helped make the Obama phenomenon happen, the fight forges on.

            Recently more than 1,000 gatherings — sponsored by MoveOn.org Political Action — were held across the country. Eight of them – from Brandon to Clearwater – were in the Tampa Bay Area.

            According to Louise Vincent, who hosted a “Fired Up and Ready To Go” gathering at her Riverview home, the purpose was to kick off another campaign. This one aimed at Congress.

            “We’re going to get started organizing locally to make sure Congress feels pressure to work with Obama on his key initiatives,” explains Vincent. “And we’re going to brainstorm about what else we can do.”

           The Port of Tampa is easily taken for granted by most locals, including those who cruise out of it. But it’s the main economic engine for all of west/central Florida. It’s worth 96,000 port-related jobs and $8 billion in economic impact.  

            With positive economic news at a premium these days, it was reassuring to see reasons for buoyant attitudes at the port.

It was recently announced that a Louisiana shipper, Gary Chouest, will take over Tampa Bay Shipbuilding & Repair Co., keep the 500 employees, and expand facilities to build new ships. First up will be a $30-million supply ship, the first new vessel to be built at the local yard in two decades.

On the same day, the port moved closer to being a much bigger player in the container-cargo business — which is where the future is. Port commissioners granted port director Richard Wainio permission to hire an engineering firm to start designing the expansion of the container terminal. Plans call for construction to begin in early 2009 on the first $17-million phase of what could eventually become a $70-million to $100-million project.