In 2002 Sarasota County made a commitment to upgrading our education system.

[Sara Hand]

In 2002 Sarasota County made a commitment to upgrading our education system.

Did we need it? Desperately! At that time we had almost 2000 people a day moving into our state and ranked close to the bottom of the 50 in quality of education. We needed to make some changes, and we have. Sarasota County’s educational system has moved forward significantly. Our schools come back with well above average grades across the county, and have even received some recognition on a national level…although our state, as a whole still has a long way to go.

There has never been a time as important as now, to continue to move forward with our commitment to increasing the quality of education for our students. Sound, sustainable economic development requires several things, including a commitment to investing in education. Our previous economic model was built primarily on tourism, construction and agriculture. The amount of education and the skill sets necessary to support that model are not the same as those necessary to support the future economic growth of Sarasota County.

In his book Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida states that people used to move to where companies were, and now companies are moving to where people want to live. If we are to capitalize on the natural resources that come with living in this beautiful area, to tap into the intellectual capital available, and to build an economic model that embraces innovative enterprises; investing in an emerging workforce that has the capacity to participate actively in this endeavor is crucial.

The Referendum on March 16^th isn’t about raising taxes. It isn’t even about having all the answers or even getting it all right. It is simply about continuing forward with the commitment that we have already made and voting YES to renew what we have already started.

[Sara Hand]

I will have several for you that I will post. If you get a chance to comt to my BarCamp Sarasota event at the Polytechnical High School in April you will see what an incredible job this new school is doing to prepare young people for pursuing passionately what they love.

[Joy Leitner]

Do you have a link to the description of what exactly is on the ballot in March? I often find that as busy as I am I am truly linked into NPR and the radio but I have to admit that I frequently know what's going on in state and local news. (SNN is only limited in its information...) I realize the huge need for education overhaul, but I find it to be similar to healthcare; it truly needs to be broken apart and reassembled as something new that will service the new millenia. But people can't deal with (or don't want to pay for) this kind of change so we will continue to add patch on patch to a broken system until its too heavy with patches to perform.
I am only a private teacher myself, and I have never permanently taught in schools probably mostly due to the fact that I have been surrounded by professional educators all my life and I know that the system is increasingly preventing them from educating children. I also lived in England surrounded by educators for 4 years and I know why the Europeans are ahead of us...
I doubt whatever is voted I would get my wish. I have not read this book yet, but from what you have said I would guess I would agree with the authors position. My grandfather taught at one of the last trade schools. I would like to see the return of the trade school as an option for people. Regardless what No Child Left Befind thinks, not every child will be an academic success, but this does not mean that they won't be successful in life. We should not be judged by our ability to attend college (which is financially not available to everyone anymore). Tradespeople should be just as valued and being in a working class should not be demeaned. Of course in a society where being rich and famous is the thing, farmer workers to harvest food are smuggled in from other countries. We built a strong nation on these principals and we could do so again, but I don't know that the referendum will ever address this...