7/17/10 School Board Update

This is not an official message from the Osceola County School Board or the Osceola County School District. I am solely responsible for all content. Feel free to forward this to any interested party. All feedback is encouraged,

As of  this past Monday neither my wife or doctor can bug me any longer about getting a colonoscopy, Dr. Stine in Orlando did it. The preparation the day before was the pits. As one friend put it to me (he’s also a doctor). "You’d rather have a colonoscopy than chemotherapy". The test came out healthy, so I get a pass for another ten years. That night had basketball practice at the Kissimmee YMCA that my assistant coach Lee Smith really ran. Lee’s a great guy and fun to coach with. We both have son’s on the team.

7/13/10 Had a great meeting with Celebration K-8 Principal Rene Clayton. Mrs. Clayton has hit the ground running. She will do a very good job in this position. Later that afternoon had a Value Adjustment Board meeting. We selected a Chairman and a Vice Chairman, met the new attorney, and approved our meeting schedule.

Later that afternoon had a regular Osceola School Board meeting. The Board approved our tentative 2010-2011 School year budget of 854M. The Board also approved 4-1 to start negotiations for a in house health clinic for employees and dependents. Later in the meeting the board reviewed our grants. From the 2000-2001 school year through the 2009-2010 school year we have gotten more than 236M in grants. This past school year we got over 75M in grants. We also reviewed our school gifted program. Which grew from the start of the 2009-2010 school year from 251 students to end with 422 students. The Celebration K-8 School made the biggest jump from 51 students to 87 students. The Board also reviewed this past years HS/College scholarship data. Our students got a grand total of 19.6M in scholarships this year for college.

Later in the meeting we had some facility items to approve. Let me start with, Board members get their board packets with plenty of time for review. Bob Nanni who runs facilities always calls me a day or two before board meetings to see if I have any questions. Typically I go through my packet the weekend prior to a board meeting and email Dr. Grego with questions or concerns I may have. 99% of the time answers come right away. In 2009 the entire Board agreed to always come to board meetings prepared at a retreat. Meanwhile Cindy Hartig this past board meeting was playing the gotcha game with staff with interrogation and prosecutorial tactics. When I called her on it she claimed that she did not have time to review her material in advance. Which is far fetched, after all she certainly had a laundry list of questions prepared to ask. Surely she could have emailed them in advance and been professional, like the rest of the board is able to do. Our staff and contractors do a great job, and are more than willing to work with any board member. Ms. Hartig has spent the past two years looking for the smoking gun in some grand conspiracy-that simply does not exist now or ever has.

Later in the meeting Dr. Grego shared the letter that went out to the FL Commissioner of Education about this years FCAT anomalies. The letter is signed and authored by the Superintendents of Broward, Miami-Dade, Leon, Hillsborough, and Duval County School Districts. In total these districts represent 40% of public school students in FL. I have always been a fan of the FCAT. This year has been a fiasco, and I blame the FL dept. of education. First off, their subcontractor took forever to get results compiled. Those results just do not jive with prior years. So the FL Dept. of Education has hired firms to audit the results. One of the firms hired for the audit is the same firm that produced the original results.Kind of like having the fox guard the hen house. So school grades still aren’t out, and when they do come out they will be suspect at best. Worse yet, is that the Governor has shown no leadership on this and has been the invisible man, keep in mind that he was the last statewide elected commissioner of education. No one from the state house or state senate has said anything either. No one has been fired over this. Total lack of leadership on this issue. Charlie Crist gives me an all new appreciation of Jeb Bush!!

7/14/10 Met with some Celebration parents at the Celebration Town tavern. They are very excited about the upcoming school year.

7/15/10 Began meeting with Osceola County Commissioner John Quinones and Kissimmee City Commissioner Art Otero. Go to my facebook page at jaywheelerosceola to see the pictures we took with them. Art and John are great guys, both are endorsing me in this election. Later that day had a Four Corner Charter School Meeting. We are upgrading technology at FCCS. We are also looking to do some facility improvements there. There contract is up for bid. The board decided not to bid it out and re-negotiate with Charter Schools USA to continue operating the school. They are doing a great job there.

7/16/10 Was spent with local media. Marvin Cortner of the Osceola News Gazette and I had a good conversation about the problems with this years FCAT. Also concluded some research this week about Osceola School funding. In last weeks candidate debate my opponent highlighted that Osceola County Schools had to give money back to the state due to a state audit. I found this very puzzling. Surely if this was the case it would have been front page news, and I’d like to think I would have known about it. I will give her credit, she did say it with great conviction. In fact after a state audit last year, the state awarded us an additional 185K and did not in fact penalize the Osceola School District. Facts can be persnickety things.

Today coached a very exciting basketball game. We played a South Orlando YMCA team. They lead almost the entire game. With less than 30 seconds to go we tied them. The game ended in a 17-17 tie. I was proud of how my team fought back. As a basketball coach nothing makes me madder than bad passing. Our passing was not great, we also missed a bunch of lay-ups and free throws. Practice Monday will be about lay-ups, following your shot and passing.

The reason this is coming out on a Saturday and not a Sunday this week is because my wife insists that I take tomorrow off.

Jay Wheeler/Osceola County School Board

District One

Cell/407-973-4141

Facebook:  jaywheelerosceola