Students short-changed by gifted-student decision

It is difficult to express in words the level of my disgust at the actions of a faction of the Hernando County School Board and an arrogant collective of parents who decided to railroad the decision to move the gifted center to their favored gated school community, Challenger K-8.

What was apparent from the start of this alleged "debate," is that there were no other viable options put forth by the Challenger cabal so as to ensure that their chosen school would be the only option to relocate the gifted center. What is also clear is that this plan has been going on since the original decision to place the gifted center at a school not named Challenger K-8.

Emphasizing the extent of the railroading that occurred in this decision, school board member Diane Bonfield was surreptitiously led to believe there would be no vote at the meeting Thursday by those who were intent on forcing the vote through at said meeting. In addition, a number of the pro-Challenger audience, in an attempt to remove any remaining dissent to the forced move, attempted to restrict the board voting rights of John Sweeney.

Although I have no strong opinions in either direction of Wayne Alexander, the former superintendent, is it any surprise that up until the end of his term in Hernando County his biggest supporter was John Sweeney and that Bonfield resisted voting him out for a significant length of time. Once Alexander, the main obstacle to the Challenger oligarchy, was gone, the push to move the gifted center to Challenger took off in full force.

In the education community, Challenger K-8 since its inception has been considered by the parents of many of the students there to be the fulfillment of their right to exclusivity without having to pay tuition for such a right.

Challenger K-8 has through the restrictive nature its magnet program artificially kept its population low while other elementary and secondary schools have been forced to suffer through overcrowding, which could have been lessened should Challenger have taken its fair share of students in the county.

Now by placing two programs with restrictive attendance at Challenger, the parents and administration will continue to demand that their school receive resources out of proportion to the school's population.

The school board also noted in a local newspaper story Challenger enrollment can be capped to "avoid current and future gifted student overpopulation." The only opinion that can be derived from that statement is that Challenger's administration will seek to use population controls to deny gifted services to students who qualify.

This is an affront to my family and to any other family whose taxes pay for education and then faced with these demands by Challenger to remain immune to overpopulation and supply rationing at the expense of their children.

My family is indeed a significant stakeholder in this decision, as we have three children who are all in the gifted program. Moving our children to Challenger would be a small inconvenience, no more than the mythical inconvenience proclaimed by the parents of the 94 students who by choice decided to deny their children gifted services for a year.

However, the real losers in this decision will be the students at all the other elementary and middle schools in the county, which will continue to have to use creative math to meet class-size requirements due to their overcrowding and which will continue to scrape up supplies as most of the resources will be shifted toward one school with favored-nation status.

Since county education is not a private business, but paid for by public taxes, the overt restriction of availability and resources used by one school, Challenger K-8, at the expense of the remainder of the students in the county comes under significant question of its legality.

What also comes into legal question given the underhanded nature of the vote on Thursday and the process leading to that decision is whether any of the school board members met with Challenger parents and administration in violation of Florida Sunshine Law.

It is not just parents of gifted students not already going to Challenger who should be irate at this railroading, but every parent whose child is attending a different school should be incensed knowing their children will be shorted by the school board yet again.

Lou Giacobbi

Spring Hill