By ALICIA LEONARD
WALTON COUNTY, FLA. – Changes in legislation on school choice won’t take the Walton County School District by surprise. During a June 21 workshop on the the Florida Legislature School Choice laws, District Superintendent Carlene Anderson told the board the district was already well poised for the new laws. “We’ve been basically operating as a school of choice for as long as I can remember. However, this school year there will be a need for developing plans and taking measures culminating in a policy for the 2017-18 school year.”
This was the first workshop on the changes that allow parents and children to make broader choices for their educational needs throughout the state.
Revisions on FS 1002.31(2)(a) state, “Beginning by the 2017-2018 school year, as part of a school district’s or charter school’s controlled open enrollment process, and in addition to existing public school choice programs…, each district school or charter school shall allow a parent from any school district in the state whose child is not subject to a current expulsion or suspension to enroll his or her child in and transport his or her child to any public school, including charter schools, that has not reached capacity in the district, subject to the maximum class size. “
Students can attend any other school in the state but the district will not be responsible for providing transportation beyond what they already do. It will be the parents’ “obligation” according to the statute, to cover transportation.
Capacity of schools in south Walton comes into play as the board and district will have certain groups of students that get “preferential treatment” according to Supervisor of Curriculum and Instruction Department, Kay Daily. These include military members’ children due to military orders, changes due to foster care, or serious illness or death of a custodial parent that results in a student being moved, or those already residing in the school district.
“The law does give us some leeway to giving students that already reside in our district preferential treatment over those wanting to attend from another district,” Daily told the board.
Parents are able to register their child informally this year, but the law directs the district to have a formal plan in place. “Everything will change again as the new plan comes into place,” Daily added.
Preference of school and siblings attending the same school are two items that will be giving more control to parents by the revisions.
If a school reaches capacity, the district will provide a lottery procedure to determine enrollment and an appeals process will have to be designed for those having issues getting their children in their school of choice. Students already living in the district could be provided three choices and in-district students would have a separate lottery from those wishing to transfer in.
Daily said the district was hoping for more guidance in the future from the Department of Education(DOE) as the policy takes shape.
Districts will have to publish on their websites the schools that have not yet reached capacity, and administration will be kept busy trying to calculate an ever changing flow of student in and out of the district and slots for students.
Reports each year will be generated for students’ choices and why those schools were chosen by them.
The changes will not alleviate the district’s need for compliance with maximum class size.
Under athletic eligibility the law states, “The school district many not delay eligibility or prevent a student participating in controlled open enrollment or other choice program from being immediately eligible to participate in interscholastic and intrascholastic extracurricular activities.”
Athletic ineligibility would be defined as “A student may not participate in a sport if the student participated in that same sport at another school during that school year, unless the student meets one of the following criteria: dependent children of active military personnel whose move resulted from military orders; children relocated due to foster care; children who move due to court-ordered change in custody; serious illness or death of a custodial parent; or authorized for good cause in district policy.”
The district by law has to serve resident students no matter what capacity levels are, and leaves districts handling the issue with a lot to work out.
Transportation and the cost, as well as who is obligated to cover it will be looked at as the new policy takes shape.
Controlled open enrollment will allow the district to have some control and guidelines as to how to place students, rather than an open enrollment with no parameters, Daily told the board.
Numbers will turn out to be the key to making the new laws workable. “That’s going to be the trick for us…is writing a plan that can keep up with capacity at a school,” Daily said, adding, “I can just imagine parents moving here and there, and do you keep a rolling number on the slots available, and…those are the things we have to work out to get us from here to there.”