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Eakins: New 'achievement zone' would lift struggling schools

 
Hillsborough County school superintendent Jeff Eakins plans to introduce a new "achievement zone" that he says would reorganize the district to better serve struggling schools. "The plan is to provide supports in a concentrated fashion and build sustainable success," he said. "It's not just getting to a C." [Times (2015)]
Hillsborough County school superintendent Jeff Eakins plans to introduce a new "achievement zone" that he says would reorganize the district to better serve struggling schools. "The plan is to provide supports in a concentrated fashion and build sustainable success," he said. "It's not just getting to a C." [Times (2015)]
Published April 20, 2018

TAMPA — Hillsborough County school superintendent Jeff Eakins is preparing to reorganize his cabinet — for the third time since 2015 — in an effort to coordinate programs at the district's highest-needs schools.

In an interview this week, Eakins described plans for an "achievement zone" consisting of dozens of schools that need improvement.

To make that happen, he plans to restructure a long-standing system of eight geographic areas, each with its own area superintendent, staff and schools.

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The achievement zone would include schools from several of the areas. "We have high-needs schools in all eight areas," he said. "And as we have those schools in all eight areas, sometimes resources can unintentionally become diluted."

The result could be a grouping so large, it would need two area superintendents. But, Eakins said, if that were to happen, he would collapse some of the remaining areas to avoid adding to the count of area superintendents, whose salaries are $134,000 a year and higher.

Eakins is, in some ways, coming full circle in creating a zone for schools that need work.

In his first months on the job, in 2015, he created an Office of Priority Schools. Headed by its own area superintendent, that office was to take charge of seven schools, most in East Tampa and Sulphur Springs, with high poverty rates and chronically poor results on state tests.

Not long after selecting the seven priority schools, Eakins renamed them "Elevate" to avoid confusion with a state designation. Then, in a 2016 reorganization, he dissolved the new office. Each area superintendent was asked look out for high-needs schools in his or her area.

In the interview, Eakins denied that there has been any backtracking on his part.

Rather, he said, he learned things along the way and the district improved in key areas.

Eakins came to recognize the importance of early childhood education, and is now adding preschool classes to some high-poverty schools.

Meanwhile, he said, the district developed a generation of strong principals and fine-tuned the way it makes sure teachers align lessons to the Florida Standards, the state system that governs education.

State actions played a part, he said. "There has been more clarity from the state in how we identify schools that are in turnaround."

While the state's accountability system is not new, the process accelerated after the passage of House Bill 7069 in 2017.

Now Hillsborough has seven D- and F-rated schools — a group that overlaps only slightly with the Elevate list, with Potter and Booker T. Washington Elementary — that must improve to at least C after this year's tests. Otherwise, an outside operator will be placed in charge of those schools in July.

Seventeen more D-rated schools are behind the seven in the state process. Others are on the cusp.

All of these schools might find themselves in the achievement zone.

"The plan is to provide supports in a concentrated fashion and build sustainable success," Eakins said. "It's not just getting to a C, it's not just getting out of turnaround."

Eakins said he is modeling his new plan on Miami-Dade County Public Schools' successful Educational Transformation Office.

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That project — launched in 2004, and revived after some financial difficulty, by superintendent Alberto Carvalho, uses a tiered approach to provide a wide range of services to schools identified as having the highest needs.

One feature Eakins especially likes: Each division of the Miami-Dade district, which is one and a half times the size of Hillsborough, has a representative who is dedicated to the transformation office. Eakins said he would like to see a similar structure in Hillsborough.

If successful, Hillsborough's achievement zone could help the district reverse some troubling trends.

Close to one in four Hillsborough students read at the lowest level according to the Florida Standards Assessment. For the last two years, Hillsborough has had more schools on the state's low-reading list than any other district, including Miami-Dade.

In defense of the district's record, Eakins often points out that Hillsborough has far fewer traditional schools with F grades — just two — than the 18 in 2015.

His goal is for there to be no D's or F's.

"The plan right now is to come with this on May 15 to the School Board meeting," he said.

On May 10, the board will have a chance to discuss the plan in a workshop.

"This has not been constructed," Eakins said. "This is more like our next conversation that we really need to have."

He said he wants to get the word out now, to gather as much input as he can.

"I want this to ultimately be owned and created by the end users," he said, "the staff members, the students, the families that are going to benefit the most from this."

Contact Marlene Sokol at (813) 226-3356 or msokol@tampabay.com.