Letter: Death of leader of opposition to year-round schools
October 22, 2007
Dear folks:
It is with the heaviest of hearts that I inform you of the passing of Debbie Smith of Orlando, Florida, who perhaps more than anyone else I know was responsible for shedding light on the dark side the year-round school calendar movement and the people pushing it. She was only 59.
Debbie departed this morning at 10 a.m. after a long battle with breast cancer. She waged her first battle against cancer in the early 1990s and was diagnosed with a recurrance about three years ago.
It was the well-researched information Debbie put together that triggered my attention as a journalist to the suspect school calendar change movement and its operatives and that provided ammunition for parents and groups all over this country to stand their ground against the school calendar change agents.
I promised her before she died that I would finish my year-round book, which has had many setbacks because of my own family’s health crises. I have asked her husband and daughter to hound me until I finish the book, which I will dedicate to her.
Below is an excerpt from a chapter in my book, about 3/4 complete, that I wrote shortly after Debbie’s cancer came back with a vengence some 14 years later. Debbie read and approved it. I hope it will give you some insight into the remarkable person she was. She really never got the credit she deserved as a year-round school opposition force. She is truly an unsung hero in the ongoing war against public education. I will never forget her.
I am sure Debbie’s family members will appreciate your notes of condolence. Write to Jeff and Amanda Smith, 5433 Rustic Pine Court, Orlando, FL 32819-7129.
Billee Bussard
Jacksonville, Florida
Bussardre@aol.com
About Debbie Smith:
Debbie Smith got involved with the year-round school issue as Education Committee Chairman of the Orange County Homeowners Association, a politically active group representing some 20,000 Orlando area property owners. She agreed to chair the committee in 1989, the year her husband Jeff became association president and her daughter Amanda, their only child, was a first-grader at Dr. Phillips Elementary, which was slated to go on a year-round calendar.
Her research and subsequent reports led the homeowners group to pass a resolution Nov. 19, 1991 calling for the school board to return three pilot year-round schools to a traditional calendar as soon as possible and to not expand the calendar in other Orange County schools. Orange County school officials were pushing to make all 85 elementary schools year-round by 1995.
The homeowners “Resolution Opposing Year-Round School” was a direct slap against 56-year-old Dee Parsons, who sat in 1992 as chairman of the Orange County School Board. It was none other than Parsons who in 1985 initiated efforts to switch the district’s calendar. Parsons, a Republican, was first elected to the school board in 1984, just a year after Republican President Ronald Reagan’s education secretary released A Nation At Risk, which called for drastic school reform, including a longer school year, as a means to compete in a global marketplace. A year after Parsons joined the school board, the National Governors Association, headed by Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, issued a report with a recommended list of education reforms that included all schools switch to a year-round calendar within a few years. Much was at stake politically for Parsons, who by then had positioned himself among Florida’s year-round school leaders determined to make Central Florida, and the Orange County school district specifically, a showcase for calendar reform.
The National Association for Year-Round Education had, in fact, staked out Florida to begin an east coast expansion, with central Florida as a major focal point. Florida, in fact, had received federal money during the Bush (41) administration for educational leadership that set up a statewide network of school reform change agents poised to work for calendar reform. “Project Lead” money also paid for a 134-page monograph published in 1993 singing praises of Florida’s year-round calendar efforts that was written and distributed nationwide precisely as the Florida pilot program was imploding because of high costs, poor testing outcomes and parent dissatisfaction. That fact was left out of the monograph.
By the 1992-93 school year, 32 of Florida’s 50 year-round schools were in six central Florida counties — Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia. In 1990, Orange County placed three schools on a multitrack year-round calendar. Beginning in school year 1993-94, half of Orange County’s 85 elementary schools and a third of Seminole elementary and middle schools were scheduled to be on a year-round calendar, with the goal to place all elementaries and some middle schools in both districts on it by 1995.
The process had been underway for years. NAYRE first sent its operatives to lobby influential, business and political leaders and state officials. In 1987, NAYRE kingpins addressed the Florida Committee of 100, and shortly thereafter Florida TaxWatch, a conservative watchdog group, signed onto year-round school. The first conference of the Florida Association for Year-round Education (FAYRE, Inc.), supported by a grant from the Florida Department of Education, was held Oct. 28-29 1990, in Orlando.
During the early1990s, two Florida year-round school change agents would reign as president of NAYRE: One was R.J. “Skip” Archibald, who as an elected (1984) school superintendent in Marion County made his school district Florida’s pilot for year-round education in 1987, a year after the National Governors embraced calendar change. Archibald’s Marion County School District is 60 miles northwest of Orange County. He presided as President of the Florida Association of Year-Round Schools at its first convention in 1990. In NAYRE’s annual directory of year-round schools for the 1992-93, Archibald, then president, is identified as Chief Executive Officer, Cooperative Education Extension System of Florida, University of North Florida. The job was created for him by Florida Education Secretary Betty Castor after Archibald decided to NOT seek re-election for school superintendent in 1992, and after he was turned down in April 1992 for the appointed post of Seminole County school superintendent.
“It cost Marion County about $750,000 more a year to operate a multitrack school instead of a traditional calendar,” said John Smith, who succeeded Archibald. The other NAYRE president from Florida was L. Diane Locker, Orange County year-round school coordinator, who presided over the group in school year 1995-96. NAYRE convention-goers from all over the country got instructions from her on the “The Politics and Planning” for a year-round school calendar. Postings about year-round school on the Prodigy bulletin board, a relatively new computer information exchange service launched in 1987, did not come to Debbie’s attention until after she had written reports for the homeowners group. Prodigy was to become a popular and effective source of information on school calendar developments, providing a nationwide hookup to parents and educators engaged in calendar fights. A Christmas gift from her husband in 1992 was, in fact, the Prodigy service, which Debbie used to continue following year-round school developments. ....
Ironically, when Debbie showed up at her first school board meeting in 1989 to do research for the homeowners group, she was inclined to believe an all-year school year might be a good idea. She had a background in education, having graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in home economics education. But her perspective quickly changed to doubt after listening to presentations by groups of parents at that meeting who, after doing their homework on year-round school organized in opposition to the pilot programs at three Orlando schools: Aloma, Palm Lake and Tangelo Park. Research by these parents provided a stark contrast to the mostly positive picture of the multitrack calendar painted in reports generated by school officials. Debbie spent thousands of hours in libraries looking at professional journals and other publications. She also spent countless hours attending informational and school board meetings on year-round school and double-checking information supplied by the Orange County school administration. Her spare bedroom was soon overflowing with piles of news clips, research reports and other documents. Pulling facts and figures from the mounds of research, she wrote with great clarity on the dangers and detriments of calendar change to unnerve the Orange County calendar change forces
Haunting Facts on ‘Phantom’ Schools
Debbie Smith determined from her research that one of the biggest misrepresentations on calendar change benefits was the promised savings from “phantom” schools. These are the bricks and mortar schools that the district wouldn’t have to build by using a multitrack calendar to expand capacity in existing school buildings. Orange County school officials estimated savings of nearly $64 million over three years every time a year-round calendar was used to avoid construction of nine “phantom” schools at construction costs of about $7 million a piece plus miscellaneous expenses. It’s false economics, she concluded.
“These large projected savings — $64 million — have the effect of dazzling the mind and preventing closer evaluation,” Debbie would write later in the OCHA News, the homeowners association newsletter. “Because YRS cost so much more to operate yearly, if you multiply the costs out over a five- or six-year period you could afford to build and operate the so-called ‘phantom school.’ At the end of this period you would have purchased the land and building for the same money, rather than just having money paid out in increased operating costs with nothing tangible to show for it.”
Debbie’s detailed explanation of the problems with the year-round calendar concept appeared in a special nine-page February 1992 edition of OCHA News. The special issue was published in response to a letter Dee Parson’s sent to the homeowners group charging Debbie’s research and presentations as biased and a misrepresentation of fact. [Parson’s letter and excerpts from Debbie’s rebuttal are provided in the book] Debbie’s article in the OCHA News begins: “Mr. Parsons’ letter . . . suggests that I have only presented ‘biased’ information to [OCHA] membership. I find this a particularly ironic accusation as I have attended many YRS presentations…by Orange Counting Public School staff and other supporters of YRS and have never attended one where there was a true pro/con discussion of the issues. These have only been what they choose to call ‘information sessions’ where administration staff have tied to ‘sell’ this program to the public. . .
“As to who is biased in presenting information…I quote from The Year-Round Education Task Force Report, dated 11/12/91: “The concept of year-round education was brought to the attention of the Orange County school system staff as early as 1985 when School Board member Dee Parsons suggested that the district consider it as an alternative which might address the growing student population in Orange County. A district objective was developed to review the results of legislative efforts. . . relative to year-round schools and report on implications for Orange County by June 30, 1987.
“Mr. Parsons was one of the first and remains one of the strongest proponents of the YRS program, but that does not necessarily mean he is right. Especially in light of more recent information that I have reviewed from school districts which have operated these programs for a number of years. I prefer to think of our resolution as a list of serious concerns rather than biased information.”
Debbie’s rebuttal concludes with the following points:
1. Money that should be going to educating children in the classroom and into teachers’ salaries is going instead into an expensive new scheduling system.
2. If you have read this entire special YRS newsletter then you should be questioning the statement by Mr. Parsons that YRS is the only significant alternative to solving space problems.
San Diego City Schools, the home base of the NAYRE, now has strict guidelines for putting schools on multitrack. They have found portables to be much cheaper. They are also putting restrictions on schools going single track because they do their student counts daily and so many children are absent during the summer, it is costing them too much money. Diane Fardig’s report [for Orange County] states that parents and students were very happy with intercessions at the Tangelo Park (YRS pilot). But I found it interesting that enrollment went down with each succeeding intercession, the lowest enrollment being during the summer. There was a difference of almost 100 children.
1. YRS does not decrease class size. You have five third grades on traditional and you’ll have five third-grades on YRS. They just won’t be in school at the same time. The only way to reduce class size is to hire more teachers.
2. There is great debate over the issue of whether YRS actually improves academics.
3. It is my hope that the next time you attend a YRS “information session,” that you will now be able to listen with a whole new level of knowledge. If you agree that there is merit to our concerns, then perhaps you will consider taking the next step in the process and let your school board members know that you are concerned. When they see empty auditorium seats, and don’t receive phone calls on an issue, they assume everything is fine and you are happy with their decisions.
A copy of Dee Parsons’ letter also was submitted and printed as Letter to the Editor in the Feb. 6, 1992 issue of The West Orange Times. The paper printed Smith’s rebuttal letter Feb. 27, 1992. Dee Parsons’ attempt to discredit Debbie Smith followed her effective presentations on the detriments of calendar change in surrounding counties.
In mid-November 1991, she was asked by a parent to speak to the Osceola County School Board. Debbie’s Osceola presentation fell a week before she was scheduled to give the same talk at a hearing of the Orange County school board on whether to expand the year-round calendar to ALL schools by 1995. Debbie believes the Orange County hearing was deliberately scheduled the week of Thanksgiving when many families that otherwise might have attended the meeting were busy with company or headed out of town. And so turnout was low at the school calendar change hearing. Her willingness to help other districts may have undermined efforts in her own. The Orange County school board voted to expand YRS to 60 schools after her abbreviated presentation at the hearing. She explained the situation in the OCHA News:
“Through a long series of events, I was contacted by a parent in Osceola County who was upset because the school board was voting to expand [the year-round calendar] after only a couple of months into their pilot year (sound familiar?). She wanted to know if I had any information I could share with her. I explained that I happened to have these packets [of information] made up [for the Nov. 26 presentation to the Orange County School Board] and I would be glad to bring them down and present this information to the Osceola County School Board.
“The Osceola School Board allowed me time to present my information, asking numerous questions. After listening to me and concerned parents from their county, they voted that night four to one to not expand its program, to form a committee to do further research on the issue, and to put YRS on the ballot in March (later changed to November) for a non-binding vote. “This was a major accomplishment as it is the first time I know of that parents and property owners in any county of Florida have ever had a chance
to vote on YRS.
“The only problem with doing this presentation in Osceola was that I was sure that much of the information that I discussed that evening would prejudice my ability to do the same presentation the next week in Orange County.
“Sadly, I was right. On the evening before the public hearing in Orange County, I received a call from the school board secretary informing me that Mr. Parsons (newly elected as school board chairperson) had decided to limit individual presentations from the public to five-minute intervals. I was told that this was going to be strictly enforced.
“You should know that under Mr. Bill Barnes, the immediate past chair for the school board, discussion was allowed to continue as long as new information was being presented or as long as it took to thoroughly cover an issue. This is the premise I used in putting these [information] packets together. I had assumed that my complete packet of information opposing YRS would be heard and, since so much of my information was current, here was a good chance that the school board members would not have had this kind of input from anyone else.
“At the beginning of my presentation, I explained that I wanted to read my resolution into the record and hopefully what they heard in the resolution would be of such a nature as to have them waive the five-minute rule and let me present the back-up [information in the] packet.
“Mr. Drew Thomas, school board attorney, was keeping time and as I finished the first page of the resolution, he announced that 51/2 minutes had elapsed. I attempted to get my time extended but was curtly informed that I had to sit down.
I then informed Mr. Parsons that he should be aware of the fact that this same packet of information had been presented in Osceola County the week before and based on the information therein along with citizen concerns had caused them to agree to put the issue on the ballot for a vote. I was extremely disappointed that our school board was unwilling to consider my information, but under their rules I had to retire the podium.
“Of the literally thousands of people who could and should, have been at this hearing, there were only five people who spoke to the resolution and a handful more in attendance. It is for this reason that I have gone into such detail in giving you this summary of events surrounding the hearing to consider input before voting to expand YRS into every elementary school in Orange County by 1995.”
This account in the OCHA News, along with the resolution and Debbie’s lengthy rebuttal to the school board’s arguments for year-round calendar, was later circulated nationwide and proved to be dynamite in blowing apart efforts of school calendar change agents elsewhere. It helped prepare parents and educators there for the year-round calendar propaganda war and the nasty political maneuvering that often accompanies it.
As a journalist trying to assess whether year-round school had merit, it was an instructive read. It also provided a basis for comparison of stories from other communities where the arguments and the political maneuverings for calendar change were eerily similar. NAYRE’s Orange County operatives won the short-term battle, but it was a costly victory because it provided the resolve for Debbie and other Orange County parents to assist parents across the nation with information that stopped similar efforts dead in their tracks.
Debbie’s closing words in the OCHA Newsletter proved to be prophetic: “If we don’t do something, in less than a few years we will be in the same position as Marion County, Fla. The YRS programs will ultimately fail after the public has had to actually live with the YRS calendar multitracking for 3-4 years. School board and administration staff responsible for bringing YRS to the district will loose their jobs and most importantly, in this time of tight budgets, public funds will have been wasted and additional funds will be required to dismantle the program and return to a traditional calendar.” Orange County returned to a traditional calendar in school year in 1995-96.
To my knowledge, there is no final analysis of what this experiment cost. Orange County Superintendent James Schott, in charge when the mechanisms for converting to a year-round calendar were put in place, would leave to become director of an Orlando arts group.
Locker would move to another state and take an administrative job in education.
Marion County School Superintendent Archibald would become an unsuccessful candidate for Superintendent of Seminole County but land a cushy job that paid $100,000—a job created for him by Florida Education Secretary Betty Castor, a year-round school proponent. [Details in a later chapter.]
Both Archibald and Locker would continue as year-round consultants, commanding as much as $2,000 a day, and would continue to be participants and presenters at NAYRE conventions.
Debbie Smith was paid exactly NOTHING for the research she did for the homeowners group. In summer 1992, just a few months after the Orange County School Board voted to put some 60 schools on a year-round calendar, Debbie would be diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease AND breast cancer. Now needing all the energy she could must for the fight of her life, Debbie bowed out of the Orange County fray for the time being, but between chemo therapy and doctor appointments, she continued to research the issue and help people from all over the state and the country who called needing calendar research. She was confident the eventual undoing of year-round school would be its expansion efforts because experiences in other communities had shown the more parents, children and educators who experience the calendar, the louder the noise becomes against it and the greater pressure to end it.
While recovering from her illnesses in the early 1990s, she became something of a stealth force in Florida’s calendar wars. She quietly assisted Florida groups around the state who found the year-round school pitchmen on their doorsteps. She alerted a group of activists to a state-level school facilities advisory committee meeting held in Orlando the day before Thanksgiving in which critical decisions on the year-round calendar were up for a vote. To the surprise of the committee members, which included lawyers from high-profile law firms and construction companies, more than a dozen activist showed up armed with facts and figures that swayed a final recommendation by the committee to back away from using a year-round calendar in the state’s master plan for Florida school facilities. [More on this in a later chapter.]
Debbie also alerted a network of activists to a little-known Legislative hearing on year-round school in Orlando, which filled an auditorium with some 400 people, most of them opponents of year-round school. The turnout was all the more remarkable because so many who had come from all corners of the state had to drive through high winds and torrential rains of a tropical storm that swept the state that day. The high turnout of angry parents and educators forced lawmakers to keep a hearing expected to last from 7 to 9 p.m. going until nearly midnight and proved to be a setback for more legislation to encourage a move to a year-round calendar. [More on this in another chapter.]
Along the way, Debbie made many new friends from all over the state and the country. They were liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, agnostics as well as Christian-right activists. Topping the list of fiery calendar warriors was Nancy Stacy, a mother of four from Ocala who effectively led the fight against Florida’s year-round calendar pilot program in Marion County and who, like Debbie, shared her research with people from all over the country.
Nancy was the first real obstacle to NAYRE’s Florida’s push, and was the organizations worst nightmare. The petite blonde mother of four has indefatigable energy, and an inquiring mind. Like Debbie, she was a stay-at-home mom who had the time to check out NAYRE’s claims. Her research included speaking directly with officials in school districts across the country that had experimented with a year-round school calendar to counter NAYRE claims of academic and cost benefits. Copies of Nancy’s research, which included letters and data from school districts around the nation refuting year-round school success stories, would also find their way across the country to defeat school calendar change proposals during the 1990s in school districts coast to coast, including Oregon, Washington, Maine and Maryland.
Debbie also became part of the NOYRE network, a by-invitation-only chat group founded by Wes Walker, an Arizona father of seven. NOYRE moderator is Rodger Holtin, an Arkansas Dad with a great instant recall of year-round school facts and figures.
The NOYRE group has included people from all religious, political and economic backgrounds — from college professors and researchers to parents who were just plain frustrated with year-round school and its politics. They included Maryland lawyer Robert Rosenfeld, who as a parent did several “legal briefs” in opposition to year-round school, thoroughly documenting each point, often with hard data he retrieved personally from school districts across the nation. Like many parents, he spent hundreds of dollars out of his own pocket gathering the information. The information he presented to the Montgomery County school board became known as the Rosenfeld papers and were widely circulated.
In the days before Internet websites, the Rosenfeld Papers, like the OCHA Newsletter written by Debbie Smith, were vital documents in thwarting summer’s Grinch—the year-round school movement.
By: BrandonBag
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