One fateful decision. Years of neglect.
Five once-average schools remade into the worst in Florida.
FAILURE FACTORIES
In just eight years, Pinellas County School Board members turned five schools in the county’s black neighborhoods into some of the worst in Florida.
First they abandoned integration, leaving the schools overwhelmingly poor and black.
Then they broke promises of more money and resources.
Then — as black children started failing at outrageous rates, as overstressed teachers walked off the job, as middle class families fled en masse — the board stood by and did nothing.
Today thousands of children are paying the price, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.
They are trapped at Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo and Melrose — five neighborhood elementary schools that the board has transformed into failure factories.
Every year, they turn out a staggering number of children who don’t know the basics.
Eight in 10 fail reading, according to state standardized test scores. Nine in 10 fail math.
Ranked by the state Department of Education, Melrose is the worst elementary school in Florida. Fairmount Park is No. 2. Maximo is No. 10. Lakewood is No. 12. Campbell Park is No. 15.
All of the schools operate within six square miles in one of Florida’s most affluent counties.
All of them were much better off a decade ago.
Times reporters spent a year reviewing tens of thousands of pages of district documents, analyzing millions of computer records and interviewing parents of more than 100 current and former students. Then they crisscrossed the state to see how other school districts compared.
Among the findings:
■ Ninety-five percent of black students tested at the schools are failing reading or math, making the black neighborhoods in southern Pinellas County the most concentrated site of academic failure in all of Florida.
■ Teacher turnover is a chronic problem, leaving some children to cycle through a dozen instructors in a single year. In 2014, more than half of the teachers in these schools asked for a transfer out.
At least three walked off the job without notice.
■ All of this is a recent phenomenon. By December 2007, when the board ended integration, black students at the schools had posted gains on standardized tests in three of the four previous years. None of the schools was ranked lower than a C. Today, all the schools have F ratings.
■ After reshaping the schools, the district funded four of them erratically. Some years they got less money per student than other schools, including those in more affluent parts of the county. In 2009, the year after resegregation, at least 50 elementary schools got more money per student than Campbell Park.
■ Other districts with higher passing rates are doing far more to aid black students, including creating special offices to target minority achievement, tracking black students’ progress in real time and offering big bonuses to attract quality teachers to high-minority schools. Pinellas did none of those things.
The problems don’t end in the five south St. Petersburg schools. Overall, black children in Pinellas County are failing at higher rates than black children in virtually any other school district in Florida.
In 2014, they were a third more likely to fail math than black children in Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange and Palm Beach counties. They were 23 percent more likely to fail math than black children in Hillsborough.
Fifty-seven of 67 school districts in Florida recorded better reading scores, putting Pinellas in the same league as the poorest, most rural counties in the state.
In an interview with the Times, Superintendent Mike Grego acknowledged the school district’s role in creating problems at the schools.
“You can’t undo the past. You have to take the district from where it’s at,” Grego said. “I’m going on record saying we’re going to fix this. And we’re going to educate our students as if each one of them was our own kid.”
Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Mike Grego
Hired in 2012, Grego has launched reforms to aid students in the five schools. They include adding extended learning programs, extra summer instruction and bringing in counselors and social workers to connect families with outside services — initiatives that were proposed in the past but never started or were discontinued.
Pinellas County’s black students haven’t been struggling in secret.
School Board members have heard repeatedly from parents and teachers at south St. Petersburg schools who begged for relief. State education officials have stepped in to monitor four of the five schools because of their low test scores.
Yet, when contacted by the Times, board members distorted facts, pleaded ignorance or said they needed more information before they could act.
Linda Lerner, who voted for the plan that resegregated the district in 2007, blamed the schools’ problems on “the cycle of poverty,” not on actions by the School Board.
“This is a nationwide thing, not just us. You hear school districts everywhere talking about this,” said Peggy O’Shea, who also voted for the plan in 2007. “It’s an issue that’s everywhere, unfortunately.”
“We only talk about it in black schools,” she added, “but we resegregated white schools as well.”
“We’ve looked at just about everything we can and put things in place,” said Carol Cook, who also voted for resegregation in 2007. “I think we’re on the right track.”
“Mindblowing,” said Terry Krassner, who joined the board in 2010 and who said virtually the same thing about struggling black students four years ago. “I think we need to figure out what we don’t know.”
Black parents and community leaders hold up such sentiments as proof of a disconnect. They say they are not convinced real changes are coming.
Goliath Davis, a former police chief and deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, speaks to Pinellas County School District officials.
“We keep making the same mistakes over and over and over,” said Goliath Davis, a former police chief and deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. “What happens to all these kids? What do they do? Every time we fail one, the criminal justice system is a winner.
And you’d rather pay to keep them incarcerated than try to straighten out the system?”How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida | Failure factories | Tampa Bay Times | Tampa Bay Times:
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”How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida | Failure factories | Tampa Bay Times | Tampa Bay Times:WHAT THE SCHOOL BOARD SAYS
The Times asked board members to take a position on key issues.
”How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida | Failure factories | Tampa Bay Times | Tampa Bay Times:YEARS OF NEGLECT
School Board members promised that things wouldn't turn out this way.
”How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida | Failure factories | Tampa Bay Times | Tampa Bay Times:
