A.G. Gancarski
Duval County School Superintendent Nikolai Vitti may be the most unpopular figure in Duval County politics.
Teachers complain about teaching to the test, the dehumanizing strictures of 21st century education. They pass those memes on to the kids they teach.
Vitti embodies 21st century education for them, almost like an Eastern European leader might have Communism, right about the time of the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact.
Yet Vitti soldiers on. His latest political setback: getting bum-rushed in early September by U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown at a workshop where the School Board was discussing plans for district boundary changes that would affect predominately African-American students at Raines, Ribault, and Jackson High Schools, and their associated feeder programs.
Now, as October winds down, Vitti seems to pledge a functional agnosticism when it comes to that ambitious slate of changes, if his comments to a few dozen parents during a community meeting at Bethel Baptist Church were any indication.
Vitti, when asked about that early in the one-hour program Wednesday night, mentioned a quote in the local paper of his being “framed in a certain direction.”
Indeed.
He is now “looking forward to working groups tearing his recommendations apart.”
Some could be “taken out” if there’s “not enough buy-in from the community,” as he wouldn’t want to “impose every single one of them on a community that may not buy in.”
This is a far cry from “we are dying on the vine,” which he said during the September workshop selling the urgency of these changes, before cooling down in the wake of Brown’s coup d’état.
He can’t possibly be looking forward to his plans to deal with the issues in urban schools, which include a declining population and tax base, being shredded.
Especially since the subtext of his comments seems to be, increasingly, that his school district is a band-aid on the gaping wounds of larger societal dysfunctions.
Vitti discussed how society’s “accountability system has changed” regarding at-risk children and populations, leading to “more burnout” as “stress permeates the entire system,” from teachers all the way to his level.
“The accountability system has spiraled out of control,” the superintendent said.
Regarding parents teaching their children deportment at home before they become discipline problems for the schools, Vitti was resigned: “There’s very little that we can do … legally we have very little leverage” to compel parents to set those standards.
“There’s only so much you can do under the law,” he said.
“A lot of our kids,” he said, “it’s unimaginable what they go through in their homes.”
“You hear the stories … you aren’t surprised Johnny’s coming to school with a gun.”
In fact, “You wonder why it isn’t worse.”
One of the issues: “The social services programs in Florida are awful … bottom of the barrel,” Vitti said, with the results clear in “what’s happening with children.”
“Are we going to properly fund programs?”
That’s likely a rhetorical question.
“The same kid you’re throwing out of school didn’t come back with any recognition of what went wrong,” he said regarding out-of-school suspension.
These youngsters are prime candidates for the criminal life and future incarceration, he said.
Meanwhile, “a lot of parents in high poverty areas are trying to survive,” to just keep “food on the table.”
Vitti was sure to cut the meeting off once it got just past 5 p.m. Though the crowd wasn’t restive, the presence of two School District cops at the doors of the church signaled that there was some worry by someone.
Lately, of course, Duval School police have had issues locking their cars, allowing AR-15 semi-automatic rifles to walk.
