It took longer than expected by a week, but after three hours of discussion this morning, the Broward County School Board approved the contract of its new superintendent, Dr. Peter Licata.
“I’m excited, I’ve been an expectant father for the last three weeks, waiting to give birth to this job!” Licata said when he was called up to the dais after the vote.
Licata held a short news conference and then met us in his office for a wide-ranging interview.
“It starts with children — the parents out there entrust us with their children to give them the very best education regardless of zip code, and right now we have a couple of zip codes that are struggling, but we gotta fix that,” Licata said.
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A career educator born in Fort Lauderdale, Licata says his first focus is making sure opening day goes smoothly.
“And after that, your biggest priority academically for this year is what?" I asked.
“We’re gonna dig deep into the data and see where we were so successful and make sure we replicate that for the upcoming year,” Licata replied, referring to the FAST test results.
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Licata says that’s a big part of earning the coveted “A” grade for the district, which depends on having enough teachers and enough quality teachers.
“From a teacher’s standpoint, there has to be a deep dive look into why we have such a critical shortage in Broward County, 401 teachers just left. It just came through the data, just this Monday, yesterday, and he needs to go and research what schools are not actively and progressively retaining their teachers and why,” said Broward Teachers Union president Anna Fusco.
“Every school district is looking for teachers. How do you get enough teachers into the district, how do you recruit and retain teachers at this point?” I asked.
“So first of all, making the district an 'A' because we have one to the north and one to the south, and we don’t want to lose teachers from Broward County that are near those peripheries, we want them to stay here. Teacher pay is obviously important,” Licata replied.
Licata said teachers should be respected here the way they are in Europe, and said it’s unfortunate that teaching has become politicized in Florida.
“Is it in your view acceptable that one person with extreme views can essentially block a book or learning material from being viewed by everyone else?” I asked.
“I’m glad you brought that up, that really isn’t the case in many ways, if you look closely at that law, it’s clear that it gets reviewed,” Licata said. “We always have to monitor what teachers bring in, what is being taught and what is age-appropriate, that’s always been the case — but I believe if we start listening to the outliers, we’re at fault ourselves.”
I also asked Licata about the impact of anti-gay and anti-trans laws that have been passed in Florida. He said the district will support and protect LGBTQ kids and for that matter, all kids “at all costs,” and he said, “I don’t think there are any laws that really say you shouldn’t.”
Licata said every student should feel comfortable and welcome at every school.
