by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Mayoral candidate Mike Weinstein says he’s pleased with the progress the Duval County school system has made over the past few years, but he doesn’t think the system is progressing fast enough.
If elected mayor, Weinstein says he’ll almost immediately start scouring the country in search of a public school system that does work. If he can’t find one in particular, he’ll borrow from several in an effort to help create a system that could serve as a national model.
“I definitely want to be the experiment in Florida,” said Weinstein who has, in the past, taught both middle and high school. “I definitely want to be at the cutting edge in really trying to outperform anywhere in Florida. Florida is not a good role model. It shouldn’t be that difficult to be at the upper edges of Florida.”
Next week, Weinstein will unveil his education plan in detail. Without going into premature specifics, he said it is time for the community to dictate what it wants in a public educations system.
“My role as mayor is to create the environment and create the excitement of having the opportunity to come together as a community and learn what they did in Houston and learn how they did it in San Antonio and learn how they did it in Washington [state],” said Weinstein. “There’s lots of experiments going on around the country and some of them will be good for us as pieces and some of them won’t fit.
“I think the State would be willing to allow us, as long as we live within the achievement goals and parameters, a lot of flexibility as long as we, as a community, were willing to be a model. We want our fair share of the revenue and, other than that, let us build our own system and we’ll meet the achievement goals.”
While stopping just short of saying an elected School Board may be passe, Weinstein said it may be time to reconsider who gives the Board direction.
“I think the School Board should be what’s best to accomplish our school system,” he said. “I don’t think the School Board has failed us because we, as a community, have never given them a set of expectations. We have never given them goals. We’ve never done anything but occasionally complain.
“Our community, as well as almost all in the country, hasn’t stepped up and said, ‘This is what we want.’ Now, if we do that and they don’t perform, then I’ll talk about all kinds of variations of what could be better. I wouldn’t discuss any variation of what we have until we give them an opportunity to perform up to our expectations. I’ve been here 26 years and I don’t think that’s ever been done.
“It’s a major adjustment to the way things have been here. It’s a decision of what we want. Do we want incremental improvements or do we want to really run to the top and build the best [system]? If we want to build the best, there have got to be major changes, major systematic changes, or else we’ll continue very much the way we are.”