7/25/10 School Board Update

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First off. This past week a teacher from our school district shared a story about her daughter with me that just seemed to make little sense to me. This teacher has a teenage daughter going overseas. The daughter needs to get shots for malaria and typhus for this trip. So the teacher checked with the School District health care insurance administrator (CIGNA). As it turns out the health insurance plan this teacher participates in will not cover the vaccines. The part that makes no sense, is that (according to the teacher) CIGNA did tell this teacher that while the shots are not covered the health insurance plan would pay for the care and treatment costs for her daughter if she did get typhus or malaria. In fairness, I do not know how much these shots cost. On the other hand it seems that the preventive shots would cost far less than doctors, hospitals, etc. that would be needed to treat such diseases. This kind of reminds me of a law (I do not remember which state has it) requiring all automobile motor vehicles to have properly working windshield wipers, but there is no law requiring these vehicles to have a windshield. I have contacted Dr. Grego about this.

7/19/10 Had an interview with the Osceola County Realtors Association for my upcoming election. They asked good questions. These questions ranged from explaining if I have mentored in the past two years, to how we can make Race to the Top work, to what are the three biggest challenges the district is facing other than a lack of funding. All of the participants really like our school uniform policy. Later that afternoon was a Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association (CFHLA) adopt a school meeting. The meeting was hosted by the Hilton at Walt Disney World. CFHLA has endorsed me for re-election this year. In 2006 I was the first school board member they ever endorsed, and am still the only one in Osceola County they have ever endorsed. At this meeting we reviewed plans for this upcoming school year. Among those plans are a toy drive for homeless students over the upcoming holiday season. We also went over kickoff plans for the start of this school year. Neptune elementary school Principal Linda Harwood will be one of the speakers at the kickoff event.

Got to tell you about Linda Harwood. Linda was Principal at Highlands elementary school before going over to open Neptune Elementary school a few years ago. I have been on the CFHLA adopt a school committee for seven years now. When the JW Marriott opened at Grande Lakes (on JY Parkway), I was able to get them to partner with Highlands Elementary School. At that time Linda was the Principal at Highlands. To her and the school’s credit they had a flourishing relationship with the JW Marriott that is still thriving today. When Linda went to Neptune she could not take the adoption with her. Now whenever she sees me, she is always hounding me for another Hotel adoption for Neptune Elementary School. So at this years kickoff event in September, I got Linda on the program to talk about the value of these relationships based on her experience at Highlands and she can also take advantage of this opportunity to request a partnership to the hoteliers in attendance. In essence it’s the old "sing for your supper". She left me a very excited voice mail on my cell phone about this. To Linda-see, I have not forgotten Neptune Elementary School. Not that she was about to let me forget about Neptune Elementary School!

7/21/10 Was the guest speaker at the Four Corners Rotary meeting at Carrabba’s out on West 192. Great group. They wanted to know about budgets, and new school programs. We also spent a fair amount of time talking about Westside K-8 School and Celebration High School. Among the participants were the Four Corners Newspaper press, we’ve known each other for years. Later that afternoon attended the Celebration Republican meeting at the 851 building. State Representative Steve Precourt was there to give an update on the state legislature. He had just gotten back from the special session in Tallahassee called by Governor Crist about offshore oil drilling. It was a short special session. Steve called it "the Charlie Crist show".

Steve is a good guy and I like him. I did get on him at this meeting about this years FCAT. First off I am a fan of accountability. Absent another metric the FCAT has been a very good thing for Florida. Before FCAT there was not any consistent metric used to assess K-12 gains/losses. Which is in now way to mean that the FCAT is imperfect. Meanwhile for all of its flaws and imperfections each school district in FL has the same advantages and disadvantages with it. Where the FCAT has really been good for FL is in elementary reading, which has risen dramatically in FL since the FCAT was put in place by former Governor Jeb Bush. The state has totally screwed up this years FCAT which really hurts all of us in FL public education. The biggest losers in this fiasco are teachers and schools who should have already gotten additional compensation based on FCAT results. What I got on Steve about was that no one in a leadership position in state government is demanding this get fixed, or that someone gets fired over this. I have left a voice mail with State Rep. Mike Horner over a week ago stating that I wanted to talk to him about the FL dept. of Education, he has not returned the call yet. So far the leadership in Tallahassee has been invisible on the current FCAT fiasco.

Also at this meeting were Republican primary candidates for US Congress who would like to challenge incumbent US Congressman Alan Grayson. The first speaker was a fellow named Dan Fanelli, he is a former US Naval officer. He touted his experience as a Navy officer and an airline pilot. Next was an Orlando businessman Bruce O’Donoghue, who talked about his experience as a small business owner. Finally former FL state senator Dan Webster spoke, he shared his experience as a state legislator. I asked all of them about their knowledge and position on Race to the Top. Mr. Fanelli had no idea what it was and tried to fumble his way through an answer. Mr. O’donoghue had a rudimentary understanding of Race to the top, but had his facts wrong. Dan Webster, basically said that he does not want the federal government meddling in FL public education. Afterwards Mr. O’Donoghue came up to me and asked me how I knew so much about race to the top. First you need to know that I was wearing a "Re-elect Jay Wheeler to the Osceola School Board" T-shirt at the meeting. One would have thought that he would be able to connect the dots. Knowing about matters large and small that affect public education in Osceola County is the job you elected me to do. While he seemed sincere, it was a really dumb question under the circumstances.

7/22/10 Had an Osceola County Boys and Girls Club Board of directors meeting arrived early to look in to see what kids were doing. In the teen computer lab, a young man was working to create his own comic strip. What was really imaginative about it was that the main character was a talking bird. Visited the beautiful arts and crafts room just as a class was ending. Stayed and talked with the staff member running the art class. He is a very nice young man, who openly admitted that he was doing his best-but really did not know what he was doing. At that point I called on my good friend Cindy Bohn. Cindy is the Celebration K-8 school elementary art teacher, and she is terrific. I told her about this new art classroom and that they really had no one with any real art education training for the kids. Cindy has agreed to donate half a day this summer (after getting back from a family vacation) to work with the staff and kids. Later we had our Board meeting. Paul Owen has been Chairman of this Board of directors since it began in 2001. He has done a super job leading this board. He has decided to step down as Chairman of this Board. The Board nominated me as Chairman of the board and by unanimous vote elected me as chairman. With Osceola County Commissioner Fred Hawkins, Osceola Schools Superintendent Dr. Mike Grego, and local businessman Sonny Buoncervullo as my three vice chairmen. I am honored and privileged to lead this Board going forward.

7/23/10 & 7/24/10 We had YMCA basketball games on back to back days. First I need to acknowledge that I have a terrific guy helping me coach this summer. Lee Smith from Celebration who also has a son on our team. We won both games by more than 20 points each. Our rebounding, speed, and defense all clicked. Everyone played very well and very very aggressively. Our team speed is really a joy to watch. In the second half of both games I sat our best players a lot of minutes in an effort to not run up the scores. After the Friday game I felt bad for the other team when they had their coach chew them out. A part of me wanted to step into their team meeting to tell them that they played hard, but were just overmatched. But it was not my team meeting, so I just walked by. After all I would not want another coach interrupting my team if I was talking to them.

Have a great week everyone.

Sincerely, Jay Wheeler

Osceola County School Board

District One