Any board member who was part of a group that pled poverty while sitting on over a hundred million dollars has to be in the running; in addition to that W.C. has had a rough year.
He was part of a board that ended student accountability by perverting grade recovery. Grade recovery used to be for kids that missed a lot of days for legitimate reasons and tried really hard but just didn’t get it. Now it is for anybody for any reason, including lack of effort and attendance.
He embraced the expansion of Teach for America who has a business model that we know is the antithesis of what we know is best practices for our children. It takes non education majors gives them a five week access course and then puts them in our most troubled schools.
Then there was the dust up about the firing of the superintendent where he took the minutes that didn’t even mention that was happening, his excuse was he followed the letter of the law. That may be true but he spin, folded and mutilated the spirit of it.
Finally he has embraced the expansion of the KIPP charter school despite the fact the first has shown no improvement from last year when it was the worst performing school in Northeast Florida.
Mr. Gentry has always struck me as somebody who where he may care about kids never wanted to get down in the schools to help them; somebody whose hubris drove him to get into the policy side of education (that and a failed state senate bid).
I don’t know if he is the worst ever but I do know he made the right choice in dropping out and our children can’t help but be better off with his replacement.
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