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Suncoast Pasco News

Opportune Timing

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THE SUNCOAST NEWS

Published: October 24, 2007

After failing for the last five years to meet the student achievement progress requirements set forth in the federal No Child Left Behind education act, five Pasco County elementary schools are going to be restructured for the 2008-2009 school year.

Two of the five – Hudson Elementary School and Rodney B. Cox Elementary School, in Dade City – could get a stem-to-stern makeover that has as options replacement of the principal and teachers.

"It's not pretty, what we're looking at," School Superintendent Heather Fiorentino said Monday in briefing the School Board on the school restructuring situation. The schools facing the less Draconian changes are Marlowe Elementary, in New Port Richey; Northwest Elementary, in Hudson, and Pasco Elementary, in Dade City.

The School Board received its briefing a day before learning the Florida Board of Education had rejected the Pasco School District's attempt to remain the exclusive contracting authority for charter schools in the county. More than 40 Florida school districts applied to the Board of Education to retain the contract authority but all but three were rejected.

Perhaps this rejection is a good thing for Pasco school children. Trying to attract good administrators and teachers to schools at which the education equivalent of martial law is being declared will be a daunting task. The same goes for keeping their good teachers from fleeing. Fiorentino said as much during Monday's School Board briefing.

Since Pasco School District officials will have to get more directly involved in the running of the five elementary schools, this is probably as good a time as any for them to let the Board of Education pull the major weight when it comes to charter schools.

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