The Time is NOW
It is time for school board members to place “students first” and become focused on results rather than processes and it is time for our community to hold them accountable for student performance.

As our elected representatives, the Pinellas County School Board is charged with the responsibility of governing Pinellas County Schools.   However, the drop out rate has continued to skyrocket year after year and the budget deficit exceeds $42 million for 2008/2009.  Innovative solutions need to be found to turn these trends around.  Continuing to focus on processes while giving little or no attention to the problem and potential solutions is doing a terrible disservice to our children and our community.  As we work together to look for solutions, several key points need to guide the discussion. 

• Students must come first.
  
  
• Pinellas County Schools must have a leader who recognizes that a crisis exists and will work with the community on a plan to address that crisis.
  
  
• The taxpayers of this community who pay for our school district, and the businesses who employ our high school and college graduates, must be recognized as key customers of our school system.
  
  
• Our school district must find innovative ways to use scarce resources more effectively.
  
  
• Bureaucracy and administrative overhead must be reduced.
  
  
• Our principals and teachers must be allowed to lead our schools, with the help of the school communities.
  
  
• Our parents and our community as a whole must recognize that it will take total community buy in to solve this problem.

The Students First Alliance, led by the Pinellas Education Foundation, has made recommendations in A Case for Change in Pinellas Schools, to address the high drop-out rate and budget deficit.

The Students First Alliance is a coalition of parents and community leaders including WorkNet Pinellas, The PACT, The Pinellas County Urban League, the Tampa Bay Partnership, the Largo Mid-Pinellas Chamber of Commerce, the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce, the Pinellas Education Foundation, Pinellas County Sheriff Jim Coats, Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard, Pinellas County Commissioners Calvin Harris, Karen Seel and Ken Welch, and State Representatives Jim Frishe, Bill Heller and Janet Long.  The Alliance has made recommendations included in A Case for Change in Pinellas Schools.