A potential reorganization of the Florida Department of Education is in a very early stage, according to officials with the agency, even as Commissioner Tony Bennett hopes to unveil a clearer picture of the proposal by September, reports Brandon Larrabee of the News Service of Florida.
Dale Chu, Bennett’s chief of staff, compared the reorganization plan right now to a cake that has been in the oven for five minutes of its hour-long baking time.
The current draft of the plan, provided to the News Service of Florida under the state’s open-records laws, appears to have few sweeping changes. It would create a new division focused on “Innovation & Technology,” as well as move some functions housed in other divisions right now — like those dealing with equal educational opportunity and teacher discipline — under the general counsel’s office.
And even with those changes, Joe Follick, a spokesman for the department, stressed that the plan “is in a very, very fluid conceptual state here.”
The lack of major changes might be due in part to the state’s laws, which limit the amount of tinkering that can be done with the department’s organizational chart. Bennett, who was superintendent in Indiana before coming to Florida, and other DOE officials have said they found the intricate laws in Florida unusual.
“Here in Florida, to his surprise, to our surprise, that flexibility was not as readily apparent. … That level of specificity was something that Tony and all of us were surprised by,” Chu said.
Some members of the State Board of Education have urged that the department ask for the laws to be changed if necessary.
“I don’t think that we should take an existing statute as a barrier,” board member John Padget said.
For now, the changes would only deal with the more than 1,000 full-time positions under the State Board of Education, meaning that offices like the division of Vocational Rehabilitation and the Division of Blind Services would be left untouched.
The main goal of the reorganization is to make sure the department moves toward the “90-60-90-90” goals that Bennett has set for the agency.
That plan calls for 90 percent of students to test at grade level, 60 percent of students to gain college credit from Advanced Placement or other courses or get an industry certification, 90 percent to graduate from high school in four years and 90 percent to be successful in college or a career after they leave.
“He wanted to make sure the department was organized to deliver against 90-60-90-90,” Chu said.
In comments to the State Board of Education last month, Bennett also suggested that the department that emerges could be streamlined.
“The more we can shift resources to drive dollars to schools and to classrooms, the better we are,” he said. “And that is really my focus here.”
Chu said the department is taking a look the number of assistant deputy commissioners and deputy chancellors it has, as well as the possible responsibilities of each of those positions, but didn’t indicate whether cuts were likely. And agency officials are still weighing how to line up dozens of smaller offices with each of the larger divisions, such as public schools, most of which would remain under the draft.
