Four years later


File photo: Superintendent of Marion County Public Schools Diane Gullett [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2024.

Home » Education
Posted May 25, 2024 | By the Ocala Gazette Editorial Board

Marion County’s first appointed school superintendent, Diane Gullet, oversees a record-high enrollment of 45,651 children and approximately 6,600 employees. That daily population is akin to managing a city of tens of thousands of children. We can’t fathom the level of challenges that entails.

She doesn’t direct this from a plush executive office. Actually, the office Gullet moved into initially was found to be unsafe because of mold and backed-up maintenance issues. Her “new” office was moved to another old school, and it’s a hike to get to a bathroom that sometimes leaks when it rains.

We at the “Gazette” tend to roll our eyes when we hear people complain about the school district’s spending. Sure, there are always ways to tighten budgets, but if school officials had wasteful intentions surely, they’d start with their own offices, right?

When the fledgling “Ocala Gazette” started publishing in July 2020, Gullet was gearing up to start her first school year after the prior year was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then, the “Gazette” reported Gullet saying she would “not be afraid to ask for big things or push big ideas.”

In that 2020 interview, Gullet summed up her three top priorities as “better communications, both inside and outside of the school system; elevating the image of the school district; and improving the district’s underperforming schools.”

“I’m pretty direct,” she said. “I’m an educator, an executive and understand the system of education. I’m not afraid to ask for what’s needed. I think that’s important for a superintendent. Sometimes you must go against what people think, but you have to explain why.”

Gullet may not have known at the time just how hard she would have to push against “what people think” to fix some problems school district leaders had allowed to grow to unmanageable, epic proportions.

In the 2020 interview, she talked about improving internal and external stakeholder communications.  We may not have a clear picture of the internal efforts necessarily, but as for the external, we have taken note and Gullet has our respect.

Since Gullet started, it’s undeniable that our county has experienced unprecedented population growth. The school district has consistently had to handle more students who show up than were projected.

Also, communication between the government bodies making development decisions and the school district leadership has been dysfunctional. The 2008 interlocal agreement between the district and other government agencies had been “abandoned” or “ignored” for at least decade when Gullet arrived.

By 2021, the need to right the ship so that the district could have a clear forecast along with hundreds of millions of dollars to meet the capacity need and backlog of maintenance to aging buildings had become acute.

Imagine the political headwinds Gullet and her board were up against. Elected officials had no interest in slowing down approvals for more developments in the areas of Marion County that are experienced the worst school overcrowding. Powerful developers had gotten used to the school district not charging them impact fees for more than a decade, money that could have been used to offset much or at least some of the impacts on infrastructure these developments create.

To get impact fees in place, it took nearly two years of hard work and negotiations. Some of the public meetings we witnessed raised our eyebrows and the sense of external forces pushing back on Gullet was palpable. We expect to report more fully on that in the coming weeks.

In addition to tapping the developers for impact fees, Gullet with the help of the school board, is asking voters in November to agree to pay an additional half-cent sales tax to be used toward new schools for 10 years.

We think that balanced approach could have been a great example to the Marion County Board of Commissioners, who are asking voters for a third renewal of the 1% sales tax to address the backlog of public safety and road projects that continue to grow while not tapping developers for higher impact fees over the same time.

We are guessing the commissioners thought it would be too politically hard to ask for both the sales tax and impact at the same time. We agree. But we just watched the school district board and Gullet’s team do it generously in an effort to ensure that the burden of funding the school district would not fall solely on the shoulders of taxpayers. There were times during meetings of school and county elected officials, when the county leaders blamed their school district counterparts, rather hypocritically in our opinion, for the decades backed-up list of needs. Threats were made against the school district by the county to retaliate on votes for other issues if the school district didn’t bend on their funding ask.

We cringed when Kevin Sheilley, CEO of the Ocala/Marion County Chamber & Economic Partnership (CEP), opined during a meeting on impact fees that the school district should make do with only 10% of the increased impact fee levels that a consultant recommended and find the crucial funds elsewhere, as if such a magic bucket of millions of dollars existed.

The consulting firm spent nearly a year surveying how much growth Marion County should expect to see in the next decade and estimated the district must come up with $1.3 billion over the next 20 years to meet the demand.

Sheilley’s suggestion was for the district to collect only $1,069 per single-family home built, which is less than they were when they were suspended during an economic downturn in 2011. Surely an organization like the CEP understands that building costs have gone up, not down. After all, isn’t that the industry’s reason for not being able to build “affordable” housing?

This unrealistic stance from the business community in the face of the school district’s enormous needs reflects a complete disconnect from the priorities of the public best interest.

How did Gullet react? She was professional and instructive. She invited people in the community to visit the school and see the conditions for themselves. “Gazette” reporter Caroline Brauchler, for one, was surprised by what she saw.

Take Sparr Elementary, for example. It was built in the 1960s and has the rusted pipes, failing HVAC and lack of amenities to prove it.

Images of MCPS maintenance needs aren’t good for selling Marion County to business prospects, and Gullet’s move may well have tipped the scales in getting the MCBOCC to approve reinstating the impact fees for schools.

Gullet’s influence has gone beyond the budgetary and construction needs. One of her biggest successes, in early learning programs, shows her vision for a better-educated local workforce, something the business leaders should all support.

Not only did Gullett successfully make the push for voluntary pre-k to be available at every elementary school in Marion County, but under her guidance the district has implemented ways to give these young students an extra boost. Kindergarten Kickstart, which began in 2022, gets youngsters into the classroom before the school year even begins.

The school district members are scheduled to discuss their evaluations of the superintendent during their regularly scheduled board meeting on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. Meanwhile, we wanted to express our admiration for Gullet’s directness and willingness to “go against what people think.”

Marion County needs more officials like Gullet to admit frankly where the needs are so that we can address them together.

 

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