Northwest Jacksonville Title I teachers sound off to Rick Scott, Pam Stewart

On Thursday, Florida Governor Rick Scott and Education Commissioner Pam Stewart held a “teacher roundtable” at an elementary school in Northwest Jacksonville.

Reynolds Lane Elementary, located near the industrial areas of Commonwealth Avenue, is in a neighborhood that shows up on the crime blotter and the lead stories of the news all too frequently.

Thursday saw Gov. Scott and Education Commissioner Pam Stewart listening to those primarily young, female, and enthusiastic teachers describe what it is they do and deal with on a daily basis, with all parties sitting on child-sized chairs in a mid-20th century styled library.

The governor wasn’t here in Jacksonville to talk … but to listen, to “hear your ideas,” he told the teachers.

And so it was he heard them. And promised to look at engaging deans of colleges of education into the issues related to Title I schools, as well as discussing waiving recurrent costs related to teacher certification.

****

Among the pressures: teacher certification, a recurring cost that led one teacher to say “we have to pay to stay employed,” and “it should be free.”

Licensure is also a pressure. Another teacher noted her desire of “permanent licenses,” saying “a lot of teachers actually dropped because they didn’t get that five-year removal.”

Scott explained these practices, saying that people want “accountability.”

“I’ve been able to get rid of 2,500 regulations on the state level,” Scott said, “and I’ll go back and look at this one.”

After the topic of professional credentials was exhausted, student behavior came up next.

****

Teachers feel “ill-equipped” to deal with student mental illnesses, especially those that have not been diagnosed.

“When they’re endangering the staff,” one teacher said, “there’s not much we can do.”

First-year teachers, said one instructor, could use training.

A school like this, said the instructor, has a great deal of such issues, due to a lack of parental involvement.

A “very high turnover of teachers” is the result.

“We had a field trip, and we couldn’t find chaperones,” the instructor said.

Some parents, said another teacher, “know school starts in August and ends in June.”

****

Still another teacher — a third-year teacher from the University of North Florida– learned that “I just feel a need to be here,” even though her school didn’t prepare her for a school such as this.

The governor was incredulous that deans of colleges of education don’t come to schools like this to see how things worked out.

In the post-event gaggle, the governor vowed to “talk to deans” and “make sure our universities are getting out and talking to teachers” at these schools.

Scott also vowed to “go back and look at fees to see if there’s anything I can get rid of there.”

“Nobody brought that up to me before,” Scott said.