- January 20, 2025
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Paying school staff — from cafeteria workers and bus drivers, to teachers and school nurses — enough to live on remains the overriding issue at Volusia County Schools, said School Board Member Carl Persis.
"That is a big challenge for us, and it is for every school district," he said. "As you know, there is a lot of competition for skilled workers in every area, and there is a statewide shortage, actually a nationwide shortage, in the teacher field.
This isn't an easy fix, he said. When there's a shortage and you're one of 67 districts, the competition for employee retention and new hires is difficult.
The Ormond Beach Observer spoke with Persis on Friday, March 11 about this and other issues impacting the school district.
Learning loss was a topic of concern as schools returned to a new normal in the pandemic. How is the district working to address this?
I think the real big asset that helped us address those significant learning losses was the federal government's funds that came. Every grant had a different name, but I'll just call them the federal funds. That gave us plenty of dollars to create really robust summer school programs, after school programs, before school programs, gave us the money to supplement teachers with pay — that also came from that from that fund. However, I would say at this point, we still haven't rebounded with all of our students, as we still see the ramifications of that long time that students went without having consistent in person instruction.
On salaries — In a time where many places are offering pay upwards of $15 an hour, what’s the bargaining process like at the district level and is the district confident this will aid in the retention of employees?
It's very difficult because we have some positions where we have more vacancies than in other positions. However, we try to do our best to keep our raises and pay equitable with surrounding districts as much as we can, and our challenges — you almost get tired of hearing it, I get tired of saying it, but it's just a fact — the Florida education finance program’s district cost differential formula hurts Volusia County, more than any other district. And it's bad every year, but now that it's been in effect now 17 years, when you think of $10 million to $13 million every year that is taken away from us, now you're getting upwards of close to $200 million that we haven't had to spend, where some other districts have had that, and other districts have had even much greater than that.
So that fund, where we're losing that money every year, really hampers our ability to be competitive with other districts that don't have that same kind of an annual loss in revenue. That makes it hard for us.
It isn't anything new. We know what the game is and we know what the parameters are, so we just have to do the best that we can. On the other hand we are extremely fortunate in Volusia County that that the voters in Volusia County have come to our rescue in regard to facilities and in regard to technology and safety through the funding of the half-cent sales tax, which the voters have approved now twice.
Last year, you fought hard to open Beachside Elementary at the Osceola Elementary site in the merger with Ortona. How are you feeling now about the decision that was made by the board?
It still hurts me. It was one of my most disappointing things. However, I contribute that to just the absence of community involvement because of COVID, because we were not able to have these discussions the way we normally would have. While this major decision was taking place, I think that that really tipped it the other way.
It just, in my estimation, didn't get the public hearing that it deserved. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, but I tend to think that it perhaps would have because one of the key elements that was never really mentioned was that our transportation department preferred the Osceola site and you know that drum just wasn’t pounded.
The good news is though that all the children are going to have a have a beautiful school, a beautiful site at Ortona and as soon as they vacate the Osceola site, not long after that — I can't say how soon but not long after that — the Tomoka students will then be displaced and they will move into the campus that is right now being used at the Osceola site and we will start building a new Tomoka Elementary School, which will which will make me extremely happy. Tomoka Elementary was one of the original schools to be built on the half-cent sales tax.
The school district last year voted to put in place a face covering policy at a time where COVID-19 cases were climbing in schools. Now, there’s a spending plan led by the Florida House that would penalize districts that made this decision. Do you still stand by the decision made, or do you wish you had voted differently?
I just heard something yesterday that now the legislature has kind of tweaked that to say that they're not going to penalize those 12 districts, but they're going to come up with $200 million or close to that, in reward money that they didn't give out the previous year, and take that $200 million and divide it amongst those 55 other districts that didn't impose the mask policy.
So then I thought, “Well, you know, that's still hurting the other districts,” even though it's not taking away from our base student allocation, which would have been absolutely terrible because that would have clearly affected students. So they thought better of that. Our position, our Volusia County legal position is that when our School Board voted on Aug. 31, to impose a mask policy, we were in compliance with the circuit judge's ruling in Leon County, who had overturned the governor's executive order, and he said that school districts can do what they want regarding the mask issue. So when the school board voted, we were advised by our legal counsel, we were following at that time, the law of the land.
Well, on Sept. 9, the governor and the state won their appeal against the circuit judge's order, and the appellate court stayed that ruling, which in effect put the governor's executive order back into effect.
And then we had a board meeting Sept. 14, where the board changed its position and made mask wearing optional. So, you know we had it in effect for two or three days, basically depends on how you look at it, so because of that, there is an understanding now that they are looking into a couple of districts who may have adopted a mass policy in the same manner that we did, using that same time frame that they imposed it at a time when the circuit judge’s ruling was in effect, and then they changed it when the state won its appeal. My understanding is right now that they're looking at Volusia and saying, “Well maybe we were not in direct violation of the executive order.” So fingers crossed on that one.
There’s also the bill that was just passed by the Senate that would prohibit school instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Is this being taught at schools now? Has it ever?
You know, I have to wonder about some of these things. It's like when they pass a bill prohibiting critical race theory, and I'm thinking: Does anybody teach critical race theory? No. So why do we need a bill prohibiting the teaching? Does anybody teach gender identity in kindergarten through third? No.
And yet they create a bill saying that so I don't really understand why sometimes we pass bills and laws to prohibit things that we haven't been doing, and there's no indication that we plan to do them. I just don't get it.
At a recent school board meeting, there were some who wished the board not renew Superintendent Scott Fritz’s contract. You were among the board members who wanted to give him more time. Why?
When you when you think he started December of 2019, and COVID started the middle of March 2020. He comes down diagnosed with cancer May of 2020. He doesn't get back to work until February 1, 2021. This 2021-2022 school year has really been his first school year where he has been on board the summer preceding it and has been on board the whole year through, will see it to the end
Number one, just to be fair to Dr. Fritz, he deserves to be evaluated on at least one full year, which his annual evaluation would be at the end of July of this year. So I think that is the fair time and the right time to evaluate Dr. Fritz and at that time, if his evaluation marks are above average from the board then I think he should be granted an extension of his contract. After all, he was the best in the land less than three years ago and has probably been on the job less than a year and a half. So, to me, it just seems to be unfair to kind of short-circuit that whole process and give him notice that we would not be extending his contract because then what? Are we going to go on another national search and, to be honest with you, I know we could not have found anyone any better at the time we hired Dr. Fritz. He was clearly the best candidate and he has proven that. He has a vision and he has created a strategic plan with the input of just about 300 people and we finally have adopted that plan and we're making great strides towards the goal that this school board asked him to do.
You still have some time on the School Board. What are you hoping to accomplish, or witness being done, in your next year?
Well, the big thing would be, as I just mentioned, this strategic plan. And I think we have so many things just moving in the right direction. I love the career technical education programs that we now have in embedded in all of our high schools. I love creating more pathways for children to have to graduation and then after graduation. My goal would really be to have every child that is walking across the stage at graduation time to really have an understanding of what they're going to do next and how they're going to get there.