Judy's Journal

Dr. Judy S. Stein

May I wish you a happy and healthy New Year in 2008 and a successful second half of the 2007-2008 school year. We are pleased to continue our work for school choice and educational options in Florida. Nova Southeastern University, Fischler School of Education and Human Services (FSEHS) has provided the home of initiatives for school choice through the National Institute of Educational Options (NIEO) which has been part of the FSEHS since 1998. This is our tenth anniversary.

Our Florida School Choice Resource Center was developed under the 2002-2007 Voluntary Public School Choice grant (VPSC) from the United States Department of Education which was provided to the State of Florida in the 2002-2003 school year to expand, reinstate or improve school choice in Florida. This grant provided a five-year sub-grant to Nova Southeastern University to develop a Florida School Choice Resource Center and Parent Resource Centers in Miami-Dade, Broward, Jacksonville and Orlando with the local school systems and the community organizations.

NIEO has worked nationally on facilitating, developing and/or implementing school choice or educational options – magnets, charters, home schools, Opportunity Scholarships, virtual schools and career academies – for parental involvement and student academic excellence.

We held our breath during the 2006-2007 year, to see if we could continue our work for the USDOE and the Florida Department of Education. At the urging and with the vision of Dr. Carlo Rodriguez, the competitive grant application was submitted by his department, the

Office of Independent Education and Parental Choice, on April 2, 2007. We waited and waited…..One Friday, July 28, 2007, almost four months after submission, we got the news!!!! FDOE was funded as one of three grants in the State of Florida (Miami-Dade and Hillsborough counties also were funded) among only fourteen grants in the nation under the VPSC program.

This proves that FLORIDA is a “bell weather state” for School Choice which includes charter schools, private school choice including Opportunity Scholarships and McKay Scholarships for Special Education students, as well as Public choice such as Magnet Schools, Career Academies, NCLB Choice (this is the choice which is provided for students in low performing schools who are able to transfer to higher performing public schools), and SES Choice (which provides choice by way of tutoring by private and public supplemental service providers), and virtual schools and home schools.

 This two-million dollar per year grant to the FDOE has a large sub grant to Nova Southeastern University, Fischler School of Education and Human Services. The state piece is to develop a competition for “interdistrict choice” to enhance and expand it in Florida, and the NSU-FSEHS portion is to further the original Parent Resource Centers and to develop new Parent Resource Centers in Tallahassee, Palm Beach, Bay and Gadsden counties and on the Seminole Reservation in Okeechobee County.

 Finally, we are happy to announce to further the vision of Dr. Carlo Rodriguez, whose untimely death took away a visionary in school choice, Nova Southeastern University has provided two scholarships for masters and doctoral awards so that the Champion for School Choice awards for the year 2008 will include a half scholarship each year for further education.

This year, Nova also provided “seed monies” for the Southeast Coalition of Essential Schools (SCES) which is at the Tampa campus for Nova Southeastern University. Our consultant and administrator in Tampa, Kathy Harris, is one of the national consultants for this organization. For more information, see www.southeastces.org and www.essentialschools.org. Kathy is working with many school districts on the Smaller Learning Communities grants and has reviewed the Project SUCCEED grants for Florida’s funding for career academies.

Expect to read about the new PRC’s and their development,

 Finally, an important development is a new collaboration between the Florida Public School Choice Consortium (FPSCC), a non profit for school choice in Florida, and the new Florida Association of Charter School Authorizers with its two new Presidents—Kathy Isrealson of Bay County for the FPSCC and Carolyn Finch of Polk County for the FACSA. We will meet together, when possible, share our web site and e newsletter and continue to support quality school choice.

And this is only the beginning.

Read our e newletter and learn about the conferences and institutes of our partner organizations, the Magnet Schools of America, the National Career Academy Coalition, the Southeast Coalition of Essential Schools and the Small Schools Workshop, as well as our own Florida Public School Choice Consortium and Florida Association of Charter School Authorizers; and learn about some of the promising practices in school choice and district leaders implementing innovations and diversity efforts in the school districts which have been implementing novel school choice programs in the State under the No Child Left Behind law.

 We hope to assist you in learning more about how school choice helps educators, parents and students with school climate; security; student achievement and educational excellence in 2007 until 2012 and beyond. Visit us in Florida.

Have a successful school year and good luck with FCAT.

Judith S. Stein Ed.D
Principal Investigator/Project Director
Florida School Choice Resource Center--
State of Florida VSCP grant of the USDOE
and Executive Director of the National Institute of
Educational Options (NIEO), Nova Southeastern University, Fischler School of Education of Human