Charter Approved, Opened In Months; Stranahan Still Waiting
BY BUDDY NEVINS
In an industrial park in Sunrise, the newest Franklin Academy is getting ready to open.
The $20 million, 106,000-square foot school was approved by the Sunrise Commission only in January.
Meanwhile, Stranahan High parents still wait for the three-year-old promise to fix their crumbling school to be fulfilled by the School Board and Superintendent Robert Runcie.
Strahanan High students will be heading back to school that is in such bad repair that it is actually dangerous to students.
I don’t have proof…yet. But there is a possibility that Runcie and his staff deliberately delayed repairs on Stranahan and other schools (Northeast High?) to curry more support for the $800 million bond referendum. Why else would projects that were already funded not be done?
The only other excuse is incompetence and the typical bureaucratic inertia that infects the glass and marble K. C. Wright school HQ.
Look at Stranahan and you can understand why students are bleeding away to charter schools. Franklin will have a brand new building with all the bells and whistles. That is why 1,000 students are abandoning schools in West Broward for the new charter.
(The semi-skilled, arrogant and and unresponsive principals that Runcie has appointed in some cases also add to the flood of students away from traditional schools. That’s a whole new subject that I will address in future posts.)
Stranahan’s plight is not surprise to those of us who have watched the Broward schools for years.
Maybe the School Board and Runcie will act once they see the petition being gathered by Stranahan parents. That’s linked here.
Maybe.
July 7th, 2015 at 11:49 am
Mr. Nevins, a super school in SUNRISE does NOT help the parents of the working class Black kids in my South Middle River neighborhood in Ft. Lauderdale or the nearby Black communities whose children go to PORTABLE CLASSROOMS – something I thought was only used during the aftermath of Hurricans or natural disasters! To walk east on NW 13th to NE 13th Street and see the “portable” classrooms – really hopped up storage containers – as classrooms near North Federal Highway turns my stomach! Of course I only see Black kids at that school! Does anyone think my third cousin’s son, the Ft. Lauderdale Jewish lawyer and his Jewish lawyer wife are sending their kids (naturally they live in Parkland) to a “souped up container” as a classroom! The fact is the LIBERALS dominate Broward County politics including school board elections, and although I vote Democratic, I am revolted how LIBERAL DEMOCRATS keep “accepting” under-standard schools and economic development programs for the minority community while Billionaires continue to increase their real estate fortunes in sleazy ways like the “Fire House” and “Sebastian Street” Landswaps! Liberalism used to mean HELPING THE POWERLESS, BRING SOCIAL SERVICES and EDUCATION TO PEOPLE< today the Liberal Establishment seems only interested in BIG BUCKS, BIG DEVELOPMENT DEALS,and things like schools for minorities or the poor in general get short shift.
I am sorry, but the condition of Stranhan is a scandal because the powerful, LIKE MY FELLOW LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC JEWS IN WEST BROWARD care only about THEMSELVES, the "ME GENERATION" of my former Riverside Drive neighbor Al Franken gone too far! I wish the parents at Stranahan the best! but I am afraid they are getting the worst!
July 7th, 2015 at 9:01 pm
Most parents in East Fort Lauderdale use the many fine private schools. Working parents would rather take a second job than send kids to inferior public schools. And who wants to send their kids to schools run by elected officials who think that the Boy Scouts are the bad guys?
July 8th, 2015 at 12:33 am
competent can-do architects, engineers, contractors and sub-contractors will leave SBBC facility staff and the “Program Managers” paid via $800,000,000.00 bond fund in the dust.
Could the SBBC staff and builders find their backsides with two hands? doubtful.
Kudos Franklin Academy!
July 8th, 2015 at 1:33 pm
Buddy, keep up the good work on this. The School Board needs to be held accountable and the public needs to see the criminals they are. There has to be a lawyer out there willing to file a civil rights lawsuit of some kind on behalf of the Stranahan students.
July 9th, 2015 at 8:22 am
@Broward Native
Many people have been working to expose the horrible conditions our student and staff must endure. OSHA told me (when I sent them video YEARS ago) that they do not cover Governmental agencies! They protect ONLY people that work for private companies, not government!
This is a total disgrace! Rapes go unreported! Students (ESE) used as janitors on campus during instruction time! I wish there WERE an attorney that is willing to go after them for all the civil rights violations. (so much more has happened)
July 14th, 2015 at 2:17 pm
WTYS