Grand jury’s damning report on public schools is proof that parental choice is best | Opinion

The recent grand jury report findings only confirm what parents already know — the system is broken.

Sadly, the report’s release is just another incrimination of the Broward County School Board. The grand jury consisted of 18 volunteer members of our community from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach voter rolls representing a full array of our diverse community. The investigation included a review of thousands of documents with more than 150 witnesses providing testimony. It culminated in several recommendations, including the recommendation that Gov. Ron DeSantis replace four Broward County School Board members for incompetence and neglect of duty.

With respect to the issue of school security and keeping students safe, the grand jury went so far as to find “that the School Board has — through deceit, malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty and incompetence — mismanaged the Smart Program, a multimillion-dollar bond specifically solicited for school safety measures.”

The latest findings mark the third grand-jury lambasting of Broward School District leadership in about a decade. Though the names have changed, the story remains the same: a lack of “meaningful oversight,” leadership and accountability; “uninformed or even misinformed decisions;” wasteful spending; improper staffing and personnel management; infighting and insubordination; poor and even no planning; and uninformed Board members failing to hold district leadership and staff accountable. All of this has drained the district’s capital reserves — public monies — and, more important, put the safety of teachers, staff and students at risk.

Systemic failures weren’t limited to Broward. Other school districts were not spared in the recently released report for wide-ranging school safety and disclosure issues. The system is clearly broken.

It is equally clear that parents know the system is broken. Case in point, Broward County’s population has increased from 1.4 million to 2.2 million between the year 2000 and now. During that same time, the number of students in Broward School Board-managed schools has fallen from 265,000 to 212,000.

The recent grand jury noted:

“(W)hen the administration became alarmed at the high number of students leaving the District (taking their revenue with them), District personnel asked 41,000 [emphasis added] parents why they were leaving. More than 40% of respondents indicated that they felt the schools were unsafe (#2 answer), undisciplined (#4 answer), and lacking in leadership (#7 answer). ... Over 90% responded they desired a safer environment (in a new school), and about 80% cited ‘stronger discipline’ and ‘stronger leadership.’ ”

Parents are exercising their right to school choice and to choose the best educational option for their children. While traditional Broward public schools enrollment has fallen, charter schools have flourished. According to the Florida Department of Education, charter schools have not only outperformed district schools in achievement tests, but a Florida Tax Watch (FTW) report found that “true” per-student cost — taking into account spending such as debt service and yes, school construction — was 31% lower than in district-run schools. Yet the academic performance in charter schools across the state is better than in traditional public schools (especially for Black and Hispanic students).

Within a day of the release of the grand jury report providing the painful details of how the system has continued to fail our students as well as taxpayers, Charlie Crist selected a running mate for lieutenant governor from within the ranks of the failing educational system, teacher and union leader Karla Hernández-Mats.

Hernández-Mats’ anti-charter school and anti–educational choice view would directly hurt minority students and parents. Her job has been to protect union interests, not the interests of parents and students. She would dismiss the interests of parents, yielding to the longstanding special interests that have been a proven failure for our children for decades.

If there is one thing the latest grand jury report confirms, it is that parents, not bureaucrats or union hacks, should guide their children’s education. The power to enroll or dis-enroll a child in a public school, charter school or private school and make other educational choices is best left to parents, not to politically driven school board members or empire-building bureaucrats or union leaders. The rights of parents to decide what’s best for their children must be protected.

Edward J. Pozzuoli is the president of the law firm Tripp Scott, based in Fort Lauderdale.

This story was originally published September 2, 2022 at 12:24 PM.