As the Flagler County school district is forced by a new state law to advocate for school choice–including vouchers, homeschooling and virtual schooling–against its own interests, the district is also learning to make the salesmanship work for itself: if there is to be true choice, the district must be included in the mix, and the message the district is disseminating is that it is “the best choice.”
The district is about to put some muscle behind the approach with the hiring of a new “school choice specialist.” Meanwhile, it is road-testing its dual allegiances with some success.
In late June the Flagler County school district administration got an email from a parent who’d been navigating the relatively new and often complicated school choice landscape. The parent was grateful. Though she was making a “different choice” for her child, as Superintendent LaShakia Moore described it–implying that the parent was pulling the child from public school, as parents have been doing by the hundreds of thousands across the state–the local district helped her out.
“Thank you for to for creating another partner with me, that I can go to and ask questions related to my children,” Superintendent LaShakia Moore said the parent wrote. That’s the message she wants to hear even from families pulling out of the district. “Because I want our families to know, we’re not upset with them when they make the best choice for their children at all. We just want to be able to do our part well and make sure that we can answer their questions.”
But answering those questions also gives the district a chance to make its own pitch, what District Communications Coordinator Don Foley says is “the best choice in Flagler messaging we’ve been using for school choice references.”
Foley’s and Moore’s messages are the double edges of the school choice sword: state law now prizes choice, or the ability of any student from any socioeconomic background to attend any school of his, her or their family’s choice–including and especially private and parochial school. The state is providing $8,000 a year per student for families who wish to send their child to private school or educate the child at home.
The state is also requiring districts to make that as easy as possible for families, in essence forcing districts to help drain their classrooms of students, and consequently their district of dollars, since districts get fewer dollars the fewer students attend. That’s been the case in Flagler County.
It’s left Moore and her district in a seemingly untenable position as enrollment, flat for 17 years, has now begun to noticeably decline. To counter that trend, the district is planning to fulfill the state’s expectations. It’ll be the state’s ally with choice. But it will also be the district’s first and foremost advocate to convey to parents that Flagler schools can be “the best choice.”
“We are seeing a need to have a person who is dedicated to ensuring our students and families are able to have clear, timely and supportive guidance when they’re navigating all of their educational options within Flagler County,” Angela O’Brien, the district’s assistant superintendent, said. “We want to ensure that this person can provide personalized support to those students and families in a way that can best meet their needs as they are navigating these traditional and non-traditional educational pathways.”
To that end, the district is creating a new position, “school choice specialist.” The person will be a navigator for parents contending with choice.
As Moore described the position to the School Board in late June, there was little question that the specialist would also be making clear to parents that they may have what they’re looking for in Flagler schools. Moore said as much in a separate interview with FlaglerLive, when she previewd the district’s new strategy. (See: “Superintendent LaShakia Moore Is Taking on ‘School Choice’ on Her Terms: Stop Competing with Vouchers at a Disadvantage.”)
School board members are adopting the same approach. “We have really got to be and I believe that we are on this trajectory to be the best choice for Flagler students,” Board member Derek Barrs said, “whether it’s hybrid, whether its this or that, whatever those situations are, I think we’re on track for that.”
Board Chair Will Furry describes the person as an “oracle” with all the answers–and the nudges the district’s way, when appropriate. “So we can try and recapture those dollars when it’s in the best interest of the student, right?” he said. “I really believe there are services that we can provide, that either we’re not putting it out there yet, or parents are not even aware that that is an option, and they would likely take it if we could present it to them in an easy way.”
“When a parent comes in and they’re wanting to do a hybrid,” Moore said, “or they’re wanting to go in a different in different direction that maybe includes us, or maybe it doesn’t include us, having that that person be someone that can provide them with proper guidance on: You have your choices. Here’s what this looks like.”
It gets complex, with students who may be dually enrolled between homeschool and a local college, students on vouchers who may want to take one or two courses in the district, and families that would have to be invoiced for whatever courses they take “for us to ensure that we’re receiving proper compensation for the courses that they’re taking with us,” Moore said. Families would use their state-allocated voucher money to pay the district its share. The coordination would be the responsibility of the new employee.
It’s a new kind of skill, based on almost entirely new law that keeps changing every year as the legislature amends it, as it just did a few weeks ago. So the position will require the sort of person who will have to learn the system from scratch, and keep up with it as it changes–a bit like a corporate lawyer keeping up with rapid changes in tax laws and loopholes, though district officials did not go so far as to make the analogy (at least not on the record; speaking on background, some officials have described the legislature’s recent machinations with vouchers in disbelieving terms.)
So it’ll be a challenge for the district to land the right person in the position–a person who’ll know how to be an objective advocate for parents while championing the district’s offerings and knowing how to stay on top of legalities, communications, records, and not least, having some subtle sales skills (couched in a different language in the job opening: “Serve as liaison between the school, region, district, and community regarding school choice programs and enrollment opportunities.”) The list of 20 performance responsibilities is daunting.
“We do need to find somebody with that level of education and that experience and knowledge with the education system,” John Fanelli, the district’s director of student services, said. “It’s growing and changing every year. We work hard to stay abreast of all the new legislative information and the changes that are made. To our families in a lot of ways, sometimes they’re making decisions, and those decisions aren’t fully informed regarding the outcomes of what could happen. In some regards, they may not be able to get a standard high school diploma because of the decisions that were made. So I think it really is important that we have somebody that is able to answer all those questions and clearly walk them through virtual to school choice to home education to a blended model.”
The school choice specialist will report to Fanelli.
To Moore, the person could be a current or former teacher, someone who’s worked in a district‘s communications department and learned to create and publish information, or someone experienced with college-level registration and enrollment systems that create “a-la-carte type of enrollment,” she said. “So I do believe that the person does exist, but in order for us to really get the best candidate, I think we needed to open it up to individuals who may not be coming through a traditional route in education.”
More said as “critical” as the position is, the district should have had it already, because as families leave the district, there’s been no one in the district to follow up and check to see whether the choice worked out as expected. “Again, we’re not upset with your making a choice,” Moore said, “but we do want to make sure that we’re here as a support, as a partner, to say if there’s something that we could do to support you as you are providing your child education in a different way.”
That may include reminding families that Flagler schools remains a choice even after they leave.
