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Hernando Today

Gifted Parents Raise Questions

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By LINNEA BROWN, Hernando Today

Published: February 10, 2008

Updated: 02/09/2008 05:22 pm

BROOKSVILLE - Transitions aren't necessarily easy.

With the Hernando County School Board's decision Tuesday to place the district's future centralized gifted education center at Explorer K-8 - the new, 2,100-student school set to open this August off Northcliffe Boulevard - the questions from parents have been pouring in.

For example, what happens if a gifted child from a magnet or lottery program switches to the new school and doesn't like it? Does the student lose his or her spot?

Those, and other questions, were brought to a meeting of the district's gifted task force Thursday by several local parents, who expressed anxiety about the board's decision.

"I don't know what the best decision is for my son. It's a scary thing to have to make him (leave a school he loves), especially knowing that gifted services won't be provided otherwise," said Spring Hill resident Fran Poland, whose son is a gifted third-grader in the magnet program at Spring Hill's Challenger School of Science and Mathematics.

The center will aim to place more than 400 of the county's kindergarten-through-8th grade students in gifted classes in one location, instead of the district's current means of offering separate classes at each school.

Challenger was initially selected as the top choice by the board's gifted education task force, who recommended Challenger because one-third of the district's gifted students currently attend the school.

However, the board eventually went with Explorer - a brand-new neighborhood school - because Challenger does not have enough space to accommodate anticipated future growth of the program.

Now, gifted students districtwide face a choice: Transfer to the new, full-time gifted program at Explorer in August or remain at their current schools and opt out of gifted curriculum.

"There are a lot of negative feelings among parents about this," Poland said.

If her son transferred to Explorer and didn't like it, he would lose his spot in Challenger's magnet program and would be funneled into regular classes at Spring Hill's J.D. Floyd Elementary, she said.

School board attorney Paul Carland confirmed that under current district rules, a student would have to reapply via portfolio or go through the lottery system to regain admittance to a school's magnet program. Any change in this policy would have to be made by the school board.

Unless a student has highly unique circumstances, gifted services will only be available at Explorer, he said.

Explorer's new principal, Dominick Ferello, attended the gifted task force meeting and eased some parental worries by volunteering to meet with gifted children and their parents to discuss the new program in coming months.

The number of gifted students whose parents actually decide to switch to the new school is yet to be determined.

A student is defined as "gifted" if he or she scores at least two standard deviations above the mean IQ score of 130 (minus the standard "error of measurement" of three points) and meets at least one characteristic of a gifted student on the state's standard scale or checklist.

In Hernando County, a student can also qualify if they have a mean IQ score of 120 and are a member of an underrepresented group - such as a low socioeconomic level or if English is not their first language.

Once identified, students who qualify as "gifted" fall under the umbrella of exceptional student education, or ESE, and bring in about $2,100 more in state per-student funding.

This year, the district reported 2.5 percent of its 22,708 students as gifted, which is the same as the general population. The current state average is 4.9.

Now, the gifted task force has until March 31 to submit its recommendations to the board

The next gifted task force meeting will take place at 4 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 21 in the media center at West Hernando Middle School, located at 14325 Ken Austin Parkway in Brooksville.

Reporter Linnea Brown can be reached at 352-544-5289 or lbrown@hernandotoday.com.

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