The Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) released federal graduation rates on Monday, January 22^nd. As of the publication of this information, the Board has not been provided with a report from the administration, so I have compiled the following information from the FLDOE’s website. https://www.fldoe.org/accountability/data-sys/edu-info-accountability-services/pk-12-public-school-data-pubs-reports/students.stml

The Florida Department of Education reports that the Hendry County School District’s graduation rates have continued to spiral downward, dropping 4.5% from 2021-22 and into the ranking of the second lowest graduation rate among Florida school districts.

While the CHS grad rate was 82.1% and the LHS grad rate was 86.9% for 2022-23, the combined performance of 84.5%, Hendry’s traditional high schools’ graduation rates have continued to be diluted by the continued poor performance of two online schools affiliated with the Hendry County School District and for which the superintendent and Hendry County School Board are responsible.

Digital Academy of Florida (DAOF) is an online charter school that enrolls students who reside throughout Florida. The Hendry County School District collects an administrative fee to serve as the host district for this online school. Regardless of where the enrolled students live, their academic data and their graduation rate of 59.3%, down 5.5% from the previous year, is included with Hendry County’s outcomes.

DAOF has had a significant part in driving down the collective graduation rate in Hendry County the past two years and overshadowing the outcomes achieved by Hendry County’s students who attend brick-and-mortar schools. When it comes to the financial impact of this data, keep in mind that an online school (and the Hendry County School District) do not receive funds (or administrative fees) for students who fail to complete.    

The other online school is the Hendry Online Academy that was created as an alternative to the Clewiston and LaBelle Youth Development Academies. Students who have committed a behavior infraction along the lines of vaping or fighting have the option of enrolling in the online educational platform in lieu of participating in an expulsion hearing. Hendry Online Academy’s graduation rate this year was 24.1%, down a whopping 43.8% from the previous year’s rate of 67.9%.

Based on historical data included in the chart I provided, the 2022-2023 data begs to question: 1) Has removing the students from a brick-and-mortar classroom setting improved the academic performance of the students who were removed and/or the students in Hendry’s traditional schools?  2) Was the unilateral decision to close the Clewiston and LaBelle Youth Development Academy a grave misstep for both students and the communities?

Site selectors are employed by businesses seeking to start up, expand, or relocate within Florida and ultimately seek out communities for their clients that have a workforce that can help grow their business. A county with the second lowest graduation rate in the state does not fare well in this selection process.

The views and opinions expressed are those of Stephanie Busin and do not necessarily reflect those of other members of the Hendry County School Board.

School districts in Florida typically receive their district report cards (school grades) by Mid-July of each year. This year has been different.

School grades were anticipated to be released anywhere from late November to early January. One may question why the school grades have been delayed this long.

As many already know, Florida students moved to a series of new statewide assessments called the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST) tests.

New standards and a changed testing model created the need for the Florida Department of Education to determine a new proficiency level as well as determine what the system to scale the scores would be for 2022-2023.

Tests have proven to be more difficult to score because FAST tests are unlike anything students have been exposed to before. It’s a series of three tests administered throughout the year that include computerized questions programmed to be more challenging as the student answers questions correctly.

Students sitting in the same testing room answered entirely different questions with varying degrees of difficulty, therefore making scoring more challenging.

New standards and the FAST were an effort to evaluate student literacy and move away from evaluating memorization.

All schools in the state will receive a standing letter grade despite being an experimental year for the new test and standards.

A variety of factors such as graduation rates, industry certifications, and “learning gains” that measure how much individual students have progressed have factored into how schools have traditionally been scored.

Learning gains are a demonstration of the progress a student, who may have started the school year behind and below grade level, makes in an academic year. A student is considered to have successful learning growth if they made enough progress. When this kind of growth happened, the overall school’s grade was ranked higher even if the level of students considered on grade level was lower.

This will not be the case for 2022-2023 FAST results. The state will only look at their test proficiency as the primary measure of the school’s success.

Learning gains will be included in the determination of 2023-2034 school grades since the state will have the data necessary to compare student growth to the previous year. This is expected to boost school grades back up if they take a hit during the 2022-23 school year.

How did local schools fare last year? 2021-2022 school grades are listed below:

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS:

Central Elementary – A

Country Oaks Elementary – C

Eastside Elementary – C

LaBelle Elementary – C

Westside Elementary – B

Upthegrove Elementary – C

MIDDLE SCHOOLS:

Clewiston Middle – C

LaBelle Middle – C

HIGH SCHOOLS:

LaBelle High – C

Clewiston High – C

I read an article published this week by the Caloosa Belle regarding the proposed future site of LaBelle High School which noted that I voted against the superintendent’s recommendation to purchase the site. The article heralded the perceived virtues of this purchase and omitted examples of concerns I referred to as common sense red flags (🚩) during the board discussion, and prior to casting the lone dissenting vote on a proposed $3,600,000 contract for 80 acres of pasture that was negotiated by Supt. Swindle.

Florida law requires that all legitimate offers and counteroffers be in writing for the state-funded acquisition of land. 🚩 No supporting documentation was provided that indicated negotiations occurred outside of accepting the initial contract from the seller’s agent for $45,000/acre. There was no counteroffer to the initial offer presented by the seller’s agent. Even if a counteroffer were declined, at the very minimum, it would have indicated a good faith effort to negotiate in the best interest of taxpayers

If an individual was seeking to purchase property and didn’t have the cash on hand to buy it, one would typically seek a loan from a financial lending institution. This is essentially what Hendry County School District (HCSD) is attempting to do through the Florida Dept of Education (FLDOE) by applying for special facilities funding designated to help poor, rural counties lacking the tax base to generate sufficient taxes to replace and/or build new schools. It was a no brainer to apply for this funding to build a new campus in order meet the seemingly ever growing enrollment at LaBelle High School. It’s the same program Glades County School District has used to build West Glades School, as well as replace Moore Haven Jr/Sr High School, and Moore Haven Elementary.

In order to apply for this special facilities funding, Florida law required HCSD to obtain two appraisals to determine the value of the 80+/- acre property, as a taxpayer protection against wasteful spending. These appraisals have standards and protocols that financially protect the lender (taxpayer funded FLDOE) as well as the buyer (taxpayer funded HCSD).🚩 The superintendent sought three appraisals of the property. The appraised values are listed below and linked to the appraisals received by the Board for review:

Calusa Appraisal: $1,450,000

Carlton Norris: $2,000,000

Wegscheid Appraisal: $3,600,000

It would be incredibly unrealistic to expect three separate appraisals to yield the same appraised values but multiple appraisals should fall within a reasonably justifiable range. 🚩 Wegscheid’s appraisal, valued exactly at the contract price, exceeded Carlton Norris’ by $1,600,000 and Calusa’s by $2,150,000.

If this were an ordinary citizen’s personal or business transaction, the lending institution would likely disqualify the highest of three appraisals due to the fact that it’s such a significant outlier. The ordinary buyer would either have to renegotiate the contract price or find another way to raise the $1,875,000 difference. 🚩 Superintendent Swindle said he averaged the highest appraisal (outlier) and the second highest appraisal to come up with an “appraised value” of $2,800,000; $800,000 less than the contract price. His proposal to fund the $800,000 difference will utilize future funding generated by the new 1/2 cent sales tax on residents of a county that meets the challenged economic criteria to qualify for special facilities funding.

The final 🚩 for me was discovering that the seller’s agent, who would collect a commission based on the sales price, is the superintendent’s former brother-in-law and the co-manager of the real estate brokerage is the superintendent’s nephew.

Special facilities funding from the FLDOE will not provide all of the funding for this project. If it is approved by the FLDOE, every dollar of special facilities funding used for the purchase of land over appraised value will divert state funds from being directed to the construction of spaces for students to learn and grow academically, socially, and athletically. The funds generated by the 1/2 cent sales tax will be applied towards paying the balance of the total cost for completing the project, and the higher that total is, the less funding will be available to be applied to other critical needs areas/projects in an expeditious manner.

My individual understanding of the basic principles of government and economics didn’t justify my support of Supt. Swindle’s recommendation so I voted against it. The superintendent’s recommendation received the super majority vote (4-1 vote on a five person board) required by Florida law to approve a contract for purchase of land over appraised value. 🍏

The Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) released federal graduation rates on January 13^th. As of the close of business on Friday the Board has not been provided with a report from the administration, so I have compiled the following information from the FLDOE’s website. https://www.fldoe.org/accountability/data-sys/edu-info-accountability-services/pk-12-public-school-data-pubs-reports/students.stml

FLDOE reports that Hendry County’s graduation rates experienced the largest decrease in the state, dropping from 90.4% in 2020 to 86.6% in 2021, and further spiraling down to 75.7% this year.

While CHS’ and LHS’ combined performance was 85.8%, their graduation rate was diluted by the poor performance of two online schools affiliated with the Hendry County School District and for which the superintendent and Hendry County School Board are responsible.

One of the online schools is the Hendry Online Academy. Students who have committed a behavior infraction that would qualify them for expulsion have the option of enrolling in the online educational platform in lieu of participating in an expulsion hearing. Hendry Online Academy’s graduation rate was 67.9%.

Digital Academy of Florida (DAOF) is an online charter school that enrolls students who reside throughout Florida. The Hendry County School District collects an administrative fee to serve as the host district for this online school. Regardless of where the enrolled students reside, their academic data and graduation rate of 64.8% is included with Hendry County’s outcomes, in turn driving down the collective graduation rate and overshadowing the outcomes achieved by Hendry County’s resident students attending brick and mortar schools.  Furthermore, an online school (and the district hosting) doesn’t receive funds (or administrative fees) for students who fail to complete.  

A county’s graduation rate is one of the public information points that site selectors employed by businesses seeking to start up, expand, or relocate take into consideration. Site selectors are ultimately seeking communities for their clients with a workforce that can help grow their business. A county with a graduation rate of 75.7% does not fare well in this selection process.

It begs the question of whether the administrative fee the district receives to sponsor a charter school that seemingly poorly educates students residing in other counties is worth receiving the lowest FTE funding in the state for Hendry’s resident students in addition to the economic stigma placed on Hendry County. It also begs the question of why the HCSD contract with DAOF was recommended for approval prior to graduation rates being released and why the school board still hasn’t received ANY information from the district administration about Hendry’s performance.  

The Hendry County School Board voted 3-1 on Tuesday, February 5, to approve Superintendent Puletti’s recommendation to hire Alex Del Russo of Carlton Fields to conduct an independent investigation into the presence of fingerprints, identified by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), on unwanted mail received at my home as belonging to the Deputy Superintendent of Human Resources, Operations and Continuous Improvement of the Hendry County School District. Dr. Sally Berg, Rev. Dwayne Brown and Amanda Nelson voted in favor of the investigation. Jon Basquin voted against it. I abstained from voting. 

Approval of the independent investigation comes on the heels of notification from the State’s Attorney’s Office 20th Judicial Circuit that the agency was declining to press charges for what was cited as a lack of evidence to prove stalking beyond a reasonable doubt, according to Sheriff Whidden.

At the request of my colleagues, I presented public records from the Hendry County Sheriff’s Office pertaining to the complaint and investigation prior to the 3-1 vote.  For the sake of transparency, those documents are included below.

The estimated cost of the investigation was estimated between $6,000 – $12,000.  Board member Amanda Nelson asked for it to be capped at $12,000. All board members were in agreement. Superintendent Puletti amended his recommendation to include the cap of $12,000 with the caveat that the investigator would have to come before the Board for approval if the costs were anticipated to exceed $12,000.

The board approved investigation will look into whether the six separate unwanted mailings were created or mailed during district time or using district resources, as well as any patterns of harassment or retaliation against the Busin family, and any negligence by the superintendent in dealing with this matter after being notified by Sheriff Whidden on November 15, 2018 of the FDLE’s determination. 

I would like to encourage any members of the school community to report any and all instances of bullying or harassment at http://www.HendrySafe.org.

The fight for justice against corruption is never easy. It never has been and never will be. It exacts a toll on our self, our families, our friends, and especially our children. In the end, I believe, as in my case, the price we pay is well worth holding on to our dignity.            ~Frank Serpico

Throughout this past election season, I have been under attack by cowards who hide behind fake social media accounts and anonymous websites, and who mail deceitful anonymous letters to people throughout the community in a desperate attempt to influence the upcoming election.  Anyone who knows me knows the agenda this coward, or possibly group of cowards, is pushing is untrue.

I am accustomed to defending others so it’s been a rather strange experience to have to defend myself, especially against someone too cowardly to reveal their identity.  I prayed the author of the anonymous letter and website would muster the courage to file an ethics complaint as they alluded to in the anonymous letter.

I asked and I received… and I’m going to share that complaint with you for the sake of transparency and so you are aware of the retaliation that is guaranteed to anyone who puts students first and speaks truth to power in this district. Regardless of what has happened in an attempt to silence me, rest assured I will not be silenced.

It’s important that you know that anyone can file an ethics complaint against any elected official for any reason. Hundreds are filed each year, particularly in the weeks prior to elections, and thrown out. Complaints are NOT the same as investigations.  For the record, I AM NOT UNDER INVESTIGATION though I am the recipient of a complaint filed by Frank Michael (Mike) Giarrantano.

Considering, as the letter below states, this complaint was confidential prior to being shared online. One can only come to the conclusion that Mike Giarratano shared it. I will share the entirety of  Mike Giarrantano’s complaint as what was posted on the internet was only a portion that was clearly posted with the intention of making people believe it’s an active investigation.  As I stated before, that’s not the case.

Now you have had the opportunity to read the complaint in its entirety, I’d like to take the time to refute the claims made by Mike Giarrantano.

• Since being elected, I have sold autism awareness shirts in my community in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018. I do this as a parent and private citizen. I do not advertise this on my professional Facebook page as alleged by Mike Giarrantano and I have not ever used any district or school resources in this endeavor. I have, on the other hand, been able to donate $13,673.05 to the Hendry Public Schools Foundation; $3,000 to Raising Cane Rodeo to benefit the Hendry Exceptional Equestrians program; and $500 to Clewiston High School’s Key Club for a total of $17,673.05. Records of those donations are on my desk and I would gladly show them to anyone who would like to stop by and see them, and I am looking forward to sharing them with the Ethics Commission to prove Mike Giarratano’s continued accusations are knowingly incorrect and malicious.
• While I do maintain two Facebook pages, both a personal and professional one, I don’t sell advertising on either. For one, you can’t sell ads on Facebook. I think Mike Giarratano meant to allege as he did in the anonymous letter that I’m selling ads on this website which is also untrue as it’s a free account. I do, on the other hand, own the domain name, www.stephaniebusin.com, which I pay $13/year for out of my personal funds to provide a low-cost resource for communication to my constituents.
• Mike Giarratano is actually telling the truth about me being married to Anthony Busin. It’s no different than the Superintendent or other board members being related to district employees. The only time someone on the board would be required to recuse (not excuse) themselves from an appointment or reappointment vote would be if the vote was solely in regards to the relative. Agendas, as well as meeting minutes, from the meetings in question reflect that those votes were part of en masse personnel recommendations that were part of a consent agendas. You can access the agendas and meeting minutes at www. hendry-schools.org.

I hope this has provided clarity to the intentionally muddied water and the insight you need to confidently cast your vote for me. Now, more than ever, we need leadership that will not cower to the status quo and who will fight the good fight for our students, teachers, parents, and community regardless of retaliation. I am that person.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide the truth regarding this matter. It is my honor and privilege to serve you.

~ Stephanie

P.S. Please take a look at the endorsements on my campaign website, www.VoteBusin.com, to see what legendary educators and community leaders have to say about my record of service.

* Since I asked for your vote and shared my campaign website, I should state that this is a political advertisement paid for and approved by Stephanie Busin for Hendry County School Board District 4.

Dear Hendry County Teacher,

I see you and I see you for what you really are…a genuine freedom fighter and activist for equality. I see you running hard and fast towards the challenges so many in this world turn away from. I see the options you have, and I see you choose to remain in the trenches of rural education and devote your life to serving a vulnerable population.

I see the resolve in your eyes when you’re working with students who are struggling. I see the joy in your eyes when your students have breakthroughs. I see the hard work and creativity it requires to help that struggling student, as well as the thriving students, achieve their highest potential each day.

I see you rise to the occasion time and time again to meet needs that are far beyond what the curriculum or your job description requires.  I see how much of your own personal life, time and resources you devote to your profession. I see you being a role model in our communities and leading by example, and I see the positive impact that has on your students.

I see you doing all this with sparse resources and overflowing hearts. I see you as the proverbial David bravely facing a new legislative Goliath around every corner.  In spite of those obstacles, I see your unwavering faith in your purpose and your Christ-like love for the children you serve.  I see an example of what’s good, true and right about the world when I reflect on what you do each day to create opportunities for all children to have a bright future.

As the mother of two of those children, as a product of the Hendry County School District, and as a school board member…THANK YOU.  I appreciate the blessing you are today and every day. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to my heroes!

~ Stephanie

Just over a million dollars. That’s the budget the Board has to address academic improvement in our D-rated district, and was the subject of an academic improvement workshop preceding the regular business meeting on 9/22.

The new audio system was in place for the workshop. The board members and superintendent were mic’ed up and the workshop was our first public meeting recorded on the new system.

The Board was presented with a list of previously discussed potential allocations totaling $153,005 during budget hearings. They are as follows:

Student Tutors (Formerly AVID) $10,000

Professional Development $3,885

Performance Pay (Estimated) $60,000

Heartland STEM Scholars Program $9,120

Virtual School (Estimated) $40,000

Science Labs $30,000

District administration brought these additional allocations totaling $402,016 before the Board for discussion:

IEP Substitutes $27,000

Data Systems Support $63,008

Professional Development for Science $15,000

Ed Options Academy $139,300

Academic Deans (2) $157,708

$555,021 is a lot of money. State funding has been more “generous” this year than in years past. We’re being told that funding should look favorable next year, but a lot can happen in a year. It’s of the utmost importance that the money we have in our hand is spent in the most effective ways possible. The objective is academic growth and achievement for close to 7,200 students through out the county. The Board’s job is the align the resources to achieve these goals.

The discussion among board members was vigorous and meaningful. Basquin expressed concern about spending trends and his desire to work on whittling down the deficit created from spending more than our revenues the past several years.

My concerns centered around the projected effectiveness of the presented strategies and if we, as a District, are investing our resources into managing the symptoms of low academic performance rather than directing resources to address the causes like truancy, virtually non-existent parental involvement, poverty and language barriers. (I’ll elaborate more on this concept in my next post.)

Thank you so much for taking time to read my blog. I appreciate your engagement and I’m humbled to serve Hendry County.

~ Stephanie