Shanoff reflects on his 1st 100 days as superintendent
While the Osceola County School District saw most of its metrics stay the same when Florida’s Department of Education released its school grades data from last school year, Osceola Superintendent Mark Shanoff, said the data is “completely informational.”
Speaking at a “Breakfast with the Pros” event Tuesday in St. Cloud, Shanoff said the data — most of the district-wide scores stayed pretty close to what was reported for 2021-22 — is the result of a new assessment system, but will help in strategic planning going forward.
“There isn’t a lot to read into it,” he said. “It is baseline information that I find promising. It did show that our middle school acceleration was highest in Central Florida, and in our high school acceleration we have work to do, but isn’t terrible news.”
While Shanoff can’t speak directly to the grades — he took over during the summer after the 2022-23 school year was completed — he did give some insight into how the metrics may help guide strategies going forward.
He did point directly to a graduation rate of 84 percent that he hopes to increase going forward.
“It needs to be 90 percent. When that happens, we know we’ve arrived,” he said. “I anticipate we’ll get there soon, we have the right systems in place.
“Florida has high graduation standards, and we’re positioned to meet them, and track the progress to give our students a chance to graduate with a plan (for the future). At the end of the day, we want parents to have a great educational experience for their child. School grades don’t always define that."
Among the grade highlights at the school level:
Harmony Community School, Hickory Elementary (each up from a ‘B’), Sports Leadership Arts Management (SLAM), NeoCity Academy, Professional and Technical High School (PATHS), the Osceola County School for the Arts, Celebration K-8, Canoe Creek K-8 and Osceola Virtual School’s secondary unit earned ‘A’ school grades.
There were no ‘F’ schools, and two charters, Poinciana Academy of Fine Arts and Victory Charter, received ‘D’s. Among the rest of schools, slightly more than half earned ‘C’s, including 19 of 28 elementary schools, five of 10 middle schools and five of 12 high schools, earned ‘C’s. Of the ‘C’s, Central Avenue and Highlands Elementary improved from ‘D’s.
At Tuesday’s event, Shanoff also shared some of the benchmarks he’s hit in his first 100 days at the helm of the county’s school system.
“Interactions like these have been great. I came from Orange County and also spent a year in Volusia. We didn’t have as close a relationship between municipalities, the business community and the school district,” he said.
He’s visited schools, walked them with principals and went on site with building and maintenance departments to see what “a day in the life” is like.
“I’m two years removed from being a principal. I’m very aware of what they go through,” he said. “The day in a school is not linear; I share in their embracing the chaos. We have 8,000 employees, we operate more like a cruise ship that’s hard to turn rather than a speedboat. We value the idea of reflection and course direction.”
During his first 100 days, employees received a 5 percent raise, thanks to the District repurposing federal relief dollars.
“Our folks got their raises. Orange County is still working on a contract, they’ve reached an impasse,” Shanoff said. “And, when we mentioned Osceola Prosper (offering free Valencia College and Osceola Technical tuition to county graduates) at a presentation in San Diego, they were completely blown away. One other district in the country does it, and it’s privately funded by an anonymous donor.”
He said he’s continuing to recruit teachers for nearly perpetual openings.
“We’ve used a national strategy, but it’s hard to recruit engineers to be teachers in Florida to fill STEM positions,” he said. “So we look to other places.
Shanoff addressed the districts new cellphone policy — students are not allowed to use them during the school day outside of allowed classroom applications or emergency situations — and how it’s resulted in more classroom gains and fewer discipline problems.
“If we did nothing else to increase achievement, I’d feel we succeeded,” he said. “We’ve heard positive responses, not just from teachers and administrators, but from parents, and the students who came to the Board meetings and complained. They’re now like, ‘This isn’t so bad.’”
So, where to go from here? Shanoff said it’s in his nature to “never be personally satisfied.”
“I’m my biggest critic. I’m absolutely happy with where the team is headed. I won’t need the evaluation I’m going to get at the end of the year to tell me what I need to be working on. I will go home over the (holiday) break, and there won’t be a day I won’t think about something we can do better. I know I can always be better, I work for the 8,000 folks in our system, not the other way around.”
