Books, bathrooms, more: Q&A with Lee County Schools Superintendent Christopher Bernier
In advance of the start of school on Aug. 10, The News-Press sat down with the Lee County School District Superintendent Christopher Bernier.
Bernier has led the district since May 16, 2022, and navigated the district through Hurricane Ian damage, which closed schools for nearly a month and has resulted in the demolition and reconstruction of Fort Myers Beach Elementary and Hector A. Cafferata Jr. Elementary.
As superintendent, Bernier's salary is $255,000 per year. His current contract is for 2½ years. His contract would be extended to 3½ years if voters decide this November to approve the referendum making the superintendent an elected job.
What are your priorities going into the school year?
I think school safety and academics always are at the top of my list. The school board's worked very hard to refresh the strategic plan ... with goals ranging everything from academic proficiencies and reading, writing and math, but also our graduation rate, some discipline statistics. It also gets into operational efficiencies, being good stewards of the public tax dollar.
How is enrollment this year? Is the voucher expansion having any impact on enrollment?
We're actually up 1,000 students from a year ago. So while HB1 did offer vouchers, it appears we are still on the positive side. We're still gaining students, about 2,000 since the close of last year and about 197 over this weekend alone. We continue to grow.
How is the district addressing new history standards set by the state?
We are working with the state law, as we've always said the school district will obey the state law, it's my responsibility as a constitutional officer. The unique part of some of the curriculum moves require some really clear direction to our educators. We've been utilizing our own academic services team, but we've also been using the Department of Education's experts who have come in and help train our teachers.
How is the process of screening classroom library books going?
In the elementary schools we are providing classroom libraries this year. The district made the investment to ensure that all of our teachers would have a district provided classroom library.
The scanning appears to be going well. We should be able to move forward with our teachers having children be able to check out books from their classrooms.
How is the Lee County School District handling the banning of certain parts of the AP Psychology curriculum? What is happening to students enrolled in AP Psychology?
We have a very unique opportunity here in the school district because we're an AICE Cambridge, IB district. So we have very few students who are actually enrolled in AP. Since we can't teach the whole class, and we don't want our students caught between the state their school district and AP, we're asking those students to make a schedule choice into either AICE Cambridge psychology or into the IB class. Both of those organizations have opened up the opportunity for our teachers to be able to teach it.
Similar to AP, AICE Cambridge and IB classes can give students college credit. Depending on the college, they can receive credit for just taking the class or they get credit when they receive the AICE Cambridge or IB diploma.
What options do students who are not comfortable using the bathroom of their birth sex have this school year?
We've constructed and identified other restrooms of a single source nature so they would be a restroom for those students to be able to utilize.
Can you share which 16 schools will have the OpenGate weapons detection systems?
I don't want to share all that data because I don't want people to understand that one school currently has it and one school does not. This has to be rolled out in phases so that we can do it appropriately and make sure that we work through any systems or processes in the different high school buildings.
More: Lee Schools add weapon detection systems to 16 schools. Here's what it means for students.
Are we going into this school year with any guardians in schools?
Six individuals graduated from the rigorous sheriff's program to be a guardian. They will be uniformed and they will be present in our school buildings. About 300 people initially were interested. We opened the training with 15 candidates and graduated six. They are uniformed. You will definitely know if you have a guardian in your school.
Do you have any plans to run for superintendent next year?
Right now I'm focused on reopening the school year, I want to make sure the school year gets off to a great start. We did that last year and were interrupted in September. Hopefully this year we'll be able to get off to a great start. And continue that momentum into the fall. When it's appropriate, I will make the announcement regarding whether I'm going to run for the position or not.
What changes can students expect this year in regards to the proximity plan?
It's not just impacting students, but also families. We've reduced the number of bus routes, we've reduced the number of miles by more than 15,000 miles per day that will increase our on-time percentage for picking students up but also getting them home on time. We're going to be talking about middle school proximity as we go into this year, because we think that's the additional boost we'll need in order to ensure that our transportation plan is a viable one.
How is the district handling growth in the county?
On August 16, is we'll have an unveiling of the new 10-year plan. It's a very aggressive plan. I can't really go much for further than that because I haven't really shared it with the board yet. I want them to have that opportunity to see the information first. But our focus is to continue to build where our demographic data says we need school buildings in order to reduce class sizes and create the educational opportunities that all of our children deserve.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Back-to-school: Q&A with Lee County Schools superintendent
