John Dick, Monroe County School Board member, joined Good Morning Keys this morning on KeysTalk 96.9/102.7FM to talk about our schools.
What’s going on with the federal and state changes to government departments, specifically the Department of Education?
Dick said, “They’re not sure what’s going to happen. I would feel that the Department of Education is going to be history, of course, what will they do with some of the programs? Everybody should understand the most money spent by the Department of Education is for the student loan program. Remember, Department of Education is education from kindergarten through college. So their big amount of funding, I’m going to say maybe three quarters of it is going to the student loan program. Everybody in the federal government, doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you’re on, everybody talks about this coming debt crisis, that we owe so much money, which we do. I mean, there’s no question the federal government owes a lot of money, but it’s all talk, and nobody does anything. So when you look at the Department of Education, they decided that they were going to cancel the student loan debt on hundreds of billions of dollars. And I don’t know if people understand when they say they’re canceling it, the banks get paid. It’s paid with tax dollars. So in other words, instead of the person that borrowed the money paying back, the Department of Education says, okay, we’ll pay the bank back. Don’t worry about it. Is that fair? Because okay, they say that the debt was out of hand, but you know what? If the next door neighbor’s kid didn’t go to college, but he decided to become an auto mechanic, he had to spend thousands of dollars on tools. So did they pay him back? No, and his taxes are paying the kid that got the college degree that didn’t get a job. I mean, just the whole thing is bizarre. Nobody really wants to fix the debt. They just want to talk about it.”
Some of the functions of the federal Department of Education could flow back down to the states.
Dick said, “Federal funds always comes with some strings attached to it. You have to do this. You have to do DEI. You have to do things that maybe the local state doesn’t want to do. I looked up and figured out how much money they spend, not getting involved with the student loan, because the student loan program is going to be picked up by some other department if they close the Department of Education. But if they just stopped spending money on anything and decided to send that money to the States, I think I figured out that there would be $8,000 a student in the United States. With that you could hire some more teachers directly in the classroom. I don’t care what program they come out with. I don’t care what computer system, the best thing that will help education is having a teacher in front of the student, and the fewer students in front of that teacher, so the smaller class size, the better it is for everybody. It’s just sad that they make these programs and then tie on all sorts of strings to them, and the Department of Education, we would all be better off without it.”
Some colleges are also getting funding cuts as well.
Dick said, “When young adults know they don’t have to pay their loans back. They don’t have any sense of hey, I’ve got to work for a living. I have to do this. Everything is a freebie. So they’re standing there wrapped up like they were Hamas. They don’t know what Hamas is. If you question some of those people, they don’t know what they’re standing there for. It’s a game, it’s a party, and it’s ridiculous. I mean, I’m embarrassed to see our colleges go in the direction they’re going. I mean, this is something that shouldn’t be around in this century at all, this anti-Semitism that’s going on. It’s heartbreaking.”
Where are we with finding a new superintendent for Monroe County School District?
Dick said, “All this stuff is on the district website, so people can go there and see it. The advertisements are out and people can apply. Now, so far, nobody has applied. We hear all sorts of rumors that people will, but it just opened up March 3. When they do get applications, they will also be put online so that people in the community can see it. So we’ve already had all the community input as to what they want. The application period will close on April 1, so it’s this whole month, basically, people will apply. Hopefully we get a lot of applications. The more, the better. Depending upon how many we’ll whittle them down at the in an April meeting on April 8, we have a meeting in Key West. It all depends on how many applicants.”
The Florida School Board Association is involved with the search and the superintendent should be selected in the beginning of May.
Dick said, “They’ve been the one running the thing. They go through the thing where you get all the community to come in and they add up the desired qualities. I mean, it makes everybody feel good. They get involved in that. But what would the qualities ever change? You want somebody’s good leader. You want somebody wants to hold people accountable. You want somebody that knows how to control the finances. I mean, there’s never anything drastically new, because they don’t want to go too specific. I’m sure that people in the Upper Keys would like to make a quality of we want a leader that puts the district administration in the Upper Keys, but they don’t do that. On that topic, offices they no longer walk from, like say, from personnel to finance to get a piece of paper signed. It’s all done on the computers. Nobody’s walking around. So we can have our offices anywhere. They did move out the special ed into Sugarloaf School, where they had room in that in that complex, to put the special ed department, and we could do that with others. I’ve never been a fan of having this big administrative complex or anything, because the communication between all the different departments is done on the computer. We have room in different buildings and different schools where we could put things. So I would be open to something along that line, instead of saying, let’s put a new district administration in Marathon or in Islamorada and then, of course, you would say, hey, the middle is the place to be. But then can you get all the people to work there? I mean, there’s a lot of issues involved, but I know that’s been something that we’ve looked at many times to see if we can get that district administration out of Key West.”
More than 400 Key West High School students learned about the Holocaust from an organization called Hate Ends Now.
Dick said, “We’ve sent students up to the museums in Miami on that, and every year there’s a program with that. I’m very proud of this school district, especially on the patriotic side. We’re not here to create radicals. This is not a time for radicals. This is a time for giving a work ethic to our students, which it seems some of these colleges, they think you’re on a free ride for the rest of your lives.”
The end of the third marking period will be on March 13.
Dick said, “This term is winding down, and a big change is coming, so we’ll see. The new superintendent might be saddled with making some drastic cuts come next year, because there will be funding reductions out of this Department of Education. I have not been a fan of the Department of Education, even from when I first got on and that department was only created in, I think 1975. I think Jimmy Carter created it. I think it was the union wanted it, because they were very friendly to the teachers unions nationally.”
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