Clayton Wilcox now knows firsthand the problems many parents have struggled with: Choice's rules are difficult to grasp. Its timetable works against newcomers.
By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published June 27, 2004
Wilcox
ST. PETERSBURG - Pinellas County's new schools superintendent is learning why parents have yet to fall in love with the school choice plan.
Clayton M. Wilcox said he found the choice system frustrating and difficult to navigate in recent weeks as he and his wife, Julie, tried to buy a house and find a school for their two young children.
"From the consumer's perspective, it's really a discouraging process," said Wilcox, who will take over the district this fall. When he does, he has some ideas for improving the choice system.
Adding to the stress, he said, was that home prices in Pinellas were higher than he expected. And real estate agents, he said, were of little help explaining choice.
When it comes to finding a school, he said, "I'm probably a little savvier than a lot of people." The fact that he still faced hurdles made him wonder what families with less expertise go through.
An acquaintance of his was moving to Pinellas at the same time, and encountered many of the same problems, Wilcox said. "I don't think that my experience was unusual."
Despite those problems, Wilcox said he and his family are "ecstatic" about moving into their two-year-old home in Dunedin and about their new school, Garrison-Jones Elementary.
His daughter, Morgann, will enter third grade when school starts Aug. 3 and his son, Tanner, will enter fifth grade.
The Wilcoxes are moving from Baton Rouge, La., where Dad's work as head of that city's struggling school system caught the attention of recruiters for the Pinellas School Board. The board hired Wilcox to replace Howard Hinesley, who retires from the district Oct. 31 after 14 years as superintendent.
Wilcox has since run headlong into a choice plan designed at a negotiating table in the late 1990s by Hinesley and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with help from a federal judge.
The plan is intended to replace court-ordered busing by encouraging families to desegregate voluntarily. School officials acknowledge that its rules were set up to achieve a settlement in a long-running court case, not to maximize convenience for families.
Wilcox experienced firsthand the problems that many Pinellas real estate agents have struggled with for some time: Choice's rules are difficult to grasp, much less explain. And its timetable works against newcomers.
Many families plan a relocation in the late spring or early summer when their children get out of school. By then, however, the vast majority of school seats in Pinellas have long since been snapped up by locals.
The optimum time to apply for the upcoming school year was last September and October.
Newcomers also are taken aback by the notion that schools are assigned through a lottery system that gives preferences to certain groups of students. Gone are the days of buying a home and knowing ahead of time which school was in your zone.
The Wilcoxes looked for a home in southern St. Petersburg but found that the ones they liked were too expensive. After that, Wilcox said, they began to focus on north county, where the kind of home they wanted - new or newer with lots of light - runs from $350,000 to $400,000.
He and his wife studied about 50 properties in all.
"The frustration is I'm spending $400,000 for a house and I can't go to a school nearby it," said Wilcox, who will earn $177,000 plus benefits in Pinellas. "It really is, "Wow.' That was a struggle for me."
He said he was pleased with the outcome, but not with the difficulty in getting there.
At the beginning of the process, the Wilcoxes were flying blind. Julie Wilcox had researched schools on the Internet from their home in Baton Rouge, but that got them only so far.
The Wilcoxes wanted to know which schools actually had room for their children, but the district couldn't start the application process until it had proof, such as a deed, that the family actually owned a home in Pinellas County.
The School Board had hired Wilcox and he had signed his contract. But district officials, knowing the Wilcoxes' odyssey through choice would be publicly scrutinized, played it by the book.
Julie Wilcox was told that Perkins Elementary - the school that most closely resembled their arts magnet school in Baton Rouge - was filled, and had a long waiting list.
Clayton Wilcox said he wanted no special help, in part because he wanted to see what Pinellas parents go through. "Never once did they say, "Clayton, here's a special list of schools for you,"' he said.
Without proof of residence, the Wilcoxes were stuck for awhile. How could they shop for a home when they didn't know whether there was room in a school nearby?
"The goals are laudable. I understand the reasons behind it," Wilcox said of the choice plan. "But it's really a difficult process for families who think schools are the priority."
Eventually, the family found a home in Dunedin and gave the district proof of the sale. At that point, district choice coordinator Jim Madden gave them a list of about 10 schools with openings still left.
The Wilcoxes did not go to a Family Education and Information Center like thousands of other families are asked to do. Wilcox said that's because he didn't know the centers existed.
Madden said he has given the same help to others.
"The things that we've done to facilitate for him we've also done for other people when they're coming in from out of state," he said.
The family chose Garrison-Jones, which initially looked filled to the brim after the choice lottery in January. But Madden said some families withdrew and spaces opened up in third and fifth grade.
Wilcox said he and his wife wanted to try a traditional elementary school. They also liked the look of the Dunedin school, the park-like areas around it and the proximity to their home. They have not had a chance to see the inside.
"It just felt like a nice community to us," he said. "I'm excited about the choice we made."
Garrison-Jones also is one of the handful of Pinellas schools that have never scored lower than an A in the state's grading system.
Looking back, Wilcox said he was frustrated by real estate agents who weren't well-versed in choice.
"I don't really think that the Realtors have a deep appreciation of the system," he said. "They don't provide much guidance in the process. They just kind of shrug their shoulders and say, "Good luck.' "
That's because the district has encouraged real estate agents to contact the school system for choice details rather than try to explain the complex rules by themselves.
"Here's the problem with that," Wilcox said. "When do most people shop for houses? I'm coming in on the weekends and there's nobody at the school board offices."
He said he has kept a list of suggestions in a notebook. One is to engage real estate agents more fully. Another is to devise "a second entry point" into choice for families who move to Pinellas after the application period.
Overall, he said, the plan seems to be designed for those who already live here.
"What's always troubled me is the people who are moving into our community in the spring and summer don't get whatever everybody else gets the first year," said School Board Chairwoman Jane Gallucci, who welcomes Wilcox's birds-eye view of choice.
One of his strengths, she said, is that he likes to see things for himself.
"That's a good thing," she said of his encounter with choice. "I said to him, "I want you to tell me what you experienced."'
