TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The Hillsborough County School Board is standing together against County Referendum 1, which would make the school superintendent an elected position.<\/p>\n
Nadia Combs, vice chair of the Hillsborough County School Board, introduced a resolution opposing the referendum. The resolution was approved at the board\u2019s meeting Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to keep politics out of schools,\u201d Combs said.<\/p>\n
Combs also raised concerns about how an elected superintendent could balance running the district with campaigning for office.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can someone run the largest district and be running a campaign also?\u201d she said. \u201cWe know about PAC money \u2014 and so anybody can donate to a PAC and we would never know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Combs said she worries voters could elect someone who does not have the proper qualifications to lead the district and who could serve a four-year term.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine if you had someone who was completely incompetent \u2014 who is an elected official \u2014 who has no experience in education,\u201d Combs said. \u201cBut is partisan \u2014 and all of a sudden they are running the seventh largest district in the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
If voters approve the referendum in November, Hillsborough County would join 39 other school districts across Florida where the superintendent is an elected position.<\/p>\n
State Representative Michael Owen introduced the bill behind the referendum. Owen said the idea has been discussed in Hillsborough County for years and would give residents more say in who leads their children\u2019s education.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a county commissioner in Hillsborough County and I promise you that this was a common drum that was beat for many years \u2014 that people would love the opportunity to have more say in who the CEO of their child\u2019s education is,\u201d Owen said.<\/p>\n
Owen said making the superintendent an elected position would be more in line with the rest of the state\u2019s school boards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho do you think should be accountable \u2014 should it be four members of a board or should it be the parents of Hillsborough County?\u201d Owen said. \u201cThe thing about it is that it\u2019s not up to me. At the end of the day, this is a referendum that\u2019s gonna go on a ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the school board\u2019s unanimous opposition to the referendum, the decision will now be in the hands of Hillsborough County voters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The Hillsborough County School Board is standing together against County Referendum 1, which would make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[274,113,276,4029,115,135,137,136,278,835],"class_list":["post-421269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-top-stories","tag-education","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-jeff-van-sant","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}