School District of Lee County superintendent looks to tackle transportation and teacher shortages

By Peter Busch  

Dr. Denise Carlin, the new superintendent of Lee County School District, is addressing transportation issues and teacher shortages in her first few months on the job.

"I'm telling you, I love the job. It is so much fun, it really is," Carlin said. "It's complex work, there are no easy answers, but I'm enjoying it, I really am."

Carlin manages a school district with more than 100,000 students, and one of her first priorities is ensuring they can all get to school on time.

"So if your child is late to school by a half hour, 45 minutes, an hour, think about what that is multiplied over a year," Carlin said. "It is an exponential amount of reading time I can't afford children to miss."

Carlin wants to switch to a plan called the Safe Start Initiative, which adds a half hour of class to the high school day and simplifies the bus schedules.

"Right now we are setting up our bus drivers, and our children, for failure," Carlin said.

Another way to improve test scores, according to Carlin, is to hire more teachers. When she was sworn in, the district was short of 230 teachers.

"There's research out there that says one year without a high-quality teacher, your dropout rate increases by 50 percent," Carlin said. "Two years you almost guarantee their dropout rate."

Her goal is to eliminate that deficit by May.

"We are going line by line through each division and finding money, working hard to find money that we can reallocate for teacher compensation," Carlin said.

As Lee County works to gain teachers, some fear the district could lose students due to federal immigration policies.

The Trump administration has removed schools from a list of safe havens for undocumented immigrants.

More than 20,000 students in the School District of Lee County were born in other countries and are still learning English.

The district doesn't ask for immigration status, but last week, they sent an email to parents explaining that if ICE agents show up at a school with a warrant, they would have to comply.

"The president made a decision, we're going to follow the law, period," Carlin said.

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