The South Florida Community Leadership Foundation announced early this month they were seeing major improvements in south Florida public schools as a result of the University's Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education.
The program was created in 2004 with a contract from former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who sought to put experienced professionals in schools to form better learning environments.
"The first year of turnaround was very successful," Director of Communications Le Ann Buntrock said.
The program's first class consisted of 10 specialists who served Virginia schools in the 2004-2005 school years.
The "school turnaround" training helped seven out of the 10 selected failing Virginia schools meet every Adequate Yearly Progress target within a year.
"In my initial year, we were turned around," said Deloris Crews, Glenwood Magnet Elementary School principal and member of the first group of specialists. "For the first time in the history of the school we were fully accredited. ... The former Gov. Warner was watching over our progress--it was exciting."
The program works to give education administrators business education specifically to help poor-performing institutions.
"School leaders are essentially doing the same thing as business leaders," Buntrock said.
Educators have many business-like responsibilities within their schools--restaurants, bus transportation, construction projects, technology and a work force that usually requires 80 percent of their budgets.
Both educators and business leaders deal with these complexities while overseeing multi-million dollar budgets.
"Professors would give real-life examples like hotels and Taco Bell for us to see techniques to adapt," Crews said.
In spite of this, Buntrock insisted that the program would not make the education world a business.
Crews added that the program also enabled her to give advice to other struggling schools.
"We're on the right path here at Glenwood Elementary School," she said.
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