Q: What can you share about your recent meeting with US Congressman Aaron Bean, chairman of the US Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education?
A: I had the opportunity to participate in a roundtable of school board members in Congressman Bean’s district over Spring Break. There were about 10 of us and we learned about upcoming House Bill 5, which is basically a Parents’ Bill of Rights on the federal level. We had a good discussion and provided input on that as well as women’s rights within Title IX. Also in attendance was the chair of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx from North Carolina. (This is the US House Committee that Congressman Bean’s subcommittee is under.)
We discussed teacher shortages extensively, which are pervasive throughout our nation. The school board members were asked on a scale of one to 10, with one being “no problem” and 10 being “we might have to shut down schools,” to quantify this problem in our districts. Every school board member in attendance answered with “eight.” We brainstormed a lot of different things about the shortage of teachers and how we could get federal focus on the issue. We identified and discussed as two of the causes: 1) the lack of respect for the profession as a whole and 2) difficulty of discipline in the classroom.
The congress members were appreciative of our input as they returned to Washington to craft legislation. I thought it was a great opportunity to advocate for our children and try to gain whatever influence we can get on a federal level for our St. Johns County students.
Q: What is the latest on the construction of the three new schools?
A: Much as I hate to share this news, and I even said at the school board meeting how very disappointed this makes me, we have made the decision to postpone completion of the RiverTown school from 2024 to 2025. As background, when we bid out the Shearwater school, we received four responses and settled on a price of $59 million. A couple of months later, the Beacon Lakes school bid only received one response, for $65 million. We think we won’t get any bids at all on the RiverTown school due to the short timeline, so we felt we needed to postpone it.
Meanwhile, we are grateful that the first two schools are coming along. The Shearwater school is getting ready to have walls tilted up and the Beacon Lakes school has the pad formed and compacted. It won’t be long until we see vertical construction with this school too.
Q: Speaking of teacher shortages, how did the district’s teacher recruitment fairs go last month?
A: The district is actively seeking new teachers for next year and our two teacher recruitment fairs went well. We attracted candidates from across the country and some of them were even hired on the spot.
Q: Do you have anything else to share with our readers?
A: We are looking forward to the final quarter of the school year with less vigorous end of the year testing for our students and graduation for our seniors. It’s hard to believe the school year is nearly over!
Q: How can our readers contact you?
A: They can email me at beverly.slough@stjohns.k12.fl.us or call me at (904) 547-7510.
