John Dick, Monroe County School Board member, joined Good Morning Keys this morning on KeysTalk 96.9/102.7FM to talk about our schools.
Monroe County School District has achieved an A rating from the Florida Department of Education.
Dick said, “It’s accomplished by everybody, from students to staff to administration. It really is very, very wonderful thing for us. It leads up to the new superintendent, who has said that his goal, even before we got this, that he would make us the best district in the state of Florida, meaning the top scorer of a rated districts, and so we’ll see how he does on that goal. But it really is really very good for Miss Axford to go out with an A rating. I’m very proud of having served with her, and I think it shows how dedicated she was to the schools and to the district, and how the staff, acknowledged that by improving and getting our grades up to an A.”
Ed Tierney is the new superintendent.
Dick said, “I expect good things to come from this journey, and we’ll see how things go. Right now, I know he’s dealing with the budget. We do have issues that which we knew was coming, the Feds definitely were going to be some reduction in funding. I know he’s trying to consolidate some of the positions in the district office, which is a good thing. I think that needs to be done, and he’s on top of that. He’s been in contact with us, with all those board members, and myself included, and has already stated some of the things he’s going to get done right away.”
Cutbacks in education have been looming for a while.
Dick said, “Everybody realized that there was going to be some cutbacks. The administration on the national have said they were going to close down the Department of Education, and no matter what, you knew that would be a reduction. So those are federal funds, and our federal funds through grants, we had told those people that have those positions that work in those jobs, that those jobs are only good as long as the money comes from the Fed. So what we always want to do, and I always said this to Miss Axford, and I said it to Mr. Tierney, we want to try to keep the people, not just to keep those positions open, but if the Feds cut the funds on a certain grant, well, every year we do have teachers retiring, employees moving on, whether they’re moving out of the Keys. So with those open positions, if we can keep those employees, instead of laying them off and firing them, have them fill these other positions. Because one thing I do know, if you lose a job in the school district, there’s not many other places you’re going to get another job in the Keys. So some people have to move out. So we want to try to do the best we can, but we knew it was coming, and I hope that we’ve prepared enough for it. We’ll see.”
The Monroe County School District finance department received an ASBO National Certificate of Excellence in the financial reporting program.
Dick said, “Our finance department, from when I first got on the school board a long time ago to present day, it’s gone in an uphill trajectory. Every year it’s just gotten better and better. So we’re very proud of that, and we’ve received the awards. We are very proud of those people.”
Also, the Monroe County School District has earned the distinction of being the first school district in the state designated as a suicide prevention certified district.
Dick said, “That really is a good thing, because we’ve had some issues with that in the Keys over the years, and it’s a very unfortunate thing, and if we can do any prevention on that with anybody, it’s really very, very important to this community.”
The start of school will be here sooner than you think.
Dick said, “When you don’t have the students in the school, it’s a lot easier, and things get done faster. So between just general maintenance, painting and fixing things that are broken, we get it done from Key West to Key Largo. Of course, the one thing making sure that they verify all the air conditioning is up to snuff and get ready because boy, oh boy, I remember over the years, a lot of times when the school started, we’d have issues with that and oh boy in August, the air conditioning is pretty important.”
Dick has been with the school district almost 20 years.
He said, “I will say this, the school district has really leaped forward in leaps and bounds. It’s a much better district, even from, and I don’t mean from just my time, when I moved down here, my children went to school here. It is a very, very different school district right now, and for the better, much for the better. I remember there was times when the whole school board meeting was involved with school safety, instead of educational issues, we wound up spending so much time on school safety, but that was the requirement, and that was the need, and it just shows you the change of how things went from one year to the next. But school safety has become a paramount issue for all districts, as it was for us and I think we’ve done a good job, and we’ve really created the safety net around our schools that our students and community deserve. We work very, very well with the sheriff, city of Key West police department. It really is a great partnership. They drill and practice. They know their local sheriff’s deputies and know the ins and outs of the schools and they practice in there as if there was an incident going on. They do that every year, a couple of times. So it’s a very, very good partnership with them, and I’m very proud to know the sheriff and the captain in Key West. When I first got on the board, we were talking about housing for staff, and they’ll be talking about it 20 years from now, and it’s going to be an ongoing challenge. We cannot provide housing for 600, 700 employees, so it’s going to get tougher as people retire and move on, and cost of the houses go up and up and up. It’s going to be a real tough problem.”