Page 13 - Frederick Heid News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

BARTOW — The Polk County School Board is facing a showdown Tuesday, when more parents and students plan to demand a mask-free option on campuses across the district beginning immediately, with one Facebook group calling for a day of protest with less than three weeks of school left. “The student code of conduct face covering policy requirement implemented by the PCSB should be brought to a vote and rescinded at the May 11 regular meeting,” the group No More Mask Mandate for Children stated on its private Facebook page last week. The School Board voted unanimously last summer to ...

BARTOW — The Polk County School Board, along with district staff, have a message for voters: “Thank you for renewing the half-cent sales tax in November 2018!”  Without the 15-year tax, they say the school district could not afford to build new schools, modernize old ones and do much-needed improvements on others. The initiative passed 68% to 32%.  As part of the district’s plan to keep people apprised of what the tax is paying for, on Tuesday, Assistant Superintendent for Facilities and Operations Angela Usher, along with Robert Kincart, founder and president of A-C-T En...

LAKELAND — Frederick Heid is ready to bolt from the gate once he begins his tenure as the new Polk County Public Schools superintendent after being unanimously selected Tuesday night by the School Board.  One of his first priorities, he said, is to figure out who to hire for his executive leadership board – one that currently has several openings.  “I need to understand the vacancies and why those vacancies exist,” Heid said in an early morning telephone interview a little more than 12 hours after the Polk County School Board voted 7-0 to hire him. “I’m a big proponent of hom...

One superintendent is on the ropes, another is out the door A roundup of Florida education news from around the state.     Hillsborough County School Superintendent Addison Davis, on left, addresses the board during a School Board retreat at the Hillsborough County Public Schools' Instructional Service Center, 2920 N. 40th St., on Tuesday, April 27, 2021 in Tampa. Also pictured is School Board Chair Lynn Gray, district 7, on right. [ DIRK SHADD | Times ] Updated 3 hours ago The school boards for two of Florida’s (and the nation’s) largest school districts continued to cope ...

On April 14, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran issued a memo, requesting that school districts with mandatory face mask policies revise them "to be voluntary for the 2021-2022 school year.”  Corcoran said in the memo issued to all 67 Florida school district superintendents that the Florida Department of Education has reviewed the health data of districts with a mandatory mask policy and found that “the data shows us that districts’ face covering policies do not impact the spread of the virus” and that “broad sweeping mandatory face covering policies serve no remaining goo...