Op-Eds from the Community

Reader opinion pieces about Lee County schools and elections, submitted anonymously or by name, and fact-checked before we publish them. Opinions are the authors’ own.

Published op-eds

• Florida "Kids" — A Lee County native grapples with the decision to raise her own family in her hometown. She argues that other young professionals and parents who chose to call Lee County home should involve themselves in making the changes they would like to see. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• Lee County Says a 50 Percent Grading Floor Does Not Exist. A Staff Memo Says It Comes From the District's Own Handbook. — On Thursday the School District of Lee County told a reporter that claims of a 50 percent minimum grade are "categorically false" and that the district has "no minimums for grading." A memo handed to staff at a Lee County school says the lowest grade that goes in the gradebook is a 50, and says it is following the district's own Secondary Grading Handbook. An assistant principal explained the same floor to teachers on video and attributed it to the chief academic officer. The district's media office then told me something different again: it is not in our handbook, and schools decide for themselves. Then an elementary teacher sent me a district unit assessment with the grading scale printed on it, and the district's own scoring page recommends that a first grader who answers nothing correctly be recorded as a 45. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• According to DeSantis - The Numbers Don't Lie. But According to the grades? Someone is. — Governor DeSantis opened the school year with a press conference at Tortuga Preserve Elementary in Lehigh Acres, announced a record 92.2 percent Florida graduation rate, and closed his remarks by saying the numbers do not lie. But according to our sources? Omission might.
• A Non-Standard Standard — Florida law fixes the grading scale for every district in the state: a D is 60 to 69, worth one quality point, defined as lowest acceptable progress. What Florida does not fix is what a teacher must put in the box when a student hands in nothing. Teachers are saying a Lee County policy from the chief academic office now answers that with a 50. Sixty-six other districts answer it however they like. Here is what that does to a diploma, and why a district losing a statewide race for money would reach for it. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• Fifty Percent for Existing — A School District of Lee County staff member who was in the room told us what their school was handed this month: a grading procedural handbook whose first rule under grading work is that the lowest grade that goes in the grade book for a general education student is a 50, even when nothing is turned in and even when the student is chronically absent. The district has to climb from 63 percent to 70 percent to be an A this year. Here is what a floor of 50 does to an average, what it does to a diploma, and why the number you get handed in October is not measuring what you think it is. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• I Voted for Trump in 2020. Then I Stopped Voting. On August 18, I Am Voting Again. — I am a registered Republican who has not voted since 2020. Before that I researched local races minimally and tended to vote Republican because it was easiest. When Ali asked me for help I told her no. I was a single mom with no bandwidth, I hated public schools, and I was already doing the voucher math on my own time. Then I started doing the interviews. Here is what changed, and what I am asking you to do with fourteen days left.
• I Have Served on the Committee That Gives Teachers Awards. This District Gives Them Another Class. — A Lee County teacher is now covering two grade levels and two subjects because her school is short a teacher, with classes of 28 to 30 against a legal cap of 22. The district's answer to teachers this year has been recognition. We heard "kudos" numerous times during yesterday's workshop. My daughter is the kind of student who falls through the cracks first. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• Lee County Makes the Best Pizza in America. Our School District Bought Its Pizza From Atlanta. — On August 3 the school board voted 6-1 to spend up to $500,000 on pizza from a single source vendor in Atlanta, owned since January 2025 by a private equity firm, with no competitive bid, in the county that just produced the first and second best pizza makers in America. One board member pulled it off the consent agenda, said she asked for a financial analysis and never received one, and cast the only vote against it. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• The Misalignment Between Parents & The District: Different Priorities, Different Cuts, Different Outcomes — She had eleven minutes. Six major topics never came up, and not one of the four things our readers ranked highest got mentioned at all. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• The Poll Was Voluntary. So Why Was Partisanship Required? — A poll went out by text in School Board District 5. Its last question makes you name a political party before it will let you finish, in a race where no party appears on the ballot. Florida voters have now rejected that idea twice. Here is how a question like that works on you, and how to see the next one coming. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• An Open Letter to Whoever Holds These Seats — Monday night, seven people vote on a tentative $3.12 billion budget. Four of those seats are on the ballot two weeks later. This letter is for whoever ends up elected on the school board August 18, about what we believe the voters elected them to protect and who we believe they were actually elected to protect it from. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• The District Has Two Bank Accounts — On Monday the board adopts a budget that pulls $27.7 million out of the operating fund while a second fund ends the same year holding $964.8 million. It looks like a savings account. It is a melting one: a quarter of its revenue expires in December 2028, and the operating budget is already leaning on it. Here is what is actually in there, what it earns, and what happens when the half-cent runs out. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• Seventy-Six Decisions, One Vote — At the July 21 school board meeting, 76 items were decided in a single block. One got pulled out for real discussion, and the sequence that led to it started with a teacher at a podium. On Monday the board adopts a $3.12 billion budget it received ten days earlier. Here is how these meetings actually work, and where an ordinary person still has leverage. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• Have You Met My Kid? — Every one of these mailers rests on a premise nobody says out loud: that a child is a blank sheet, and whoever writes on it last wins. A registered Republican, and a co-founder of this site, on what a parent actually holds, what Florida law already guarantees you, and what the school board was really voting on while we were all being told to worry. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• The Lee County Public School System Was All We Had… Until It Wasn’t — A private school told this Lee County mother her daughter belonged in a separate classroom. She chose Lee County public schools instead, where an evaluation, an IEP, a resource teacher, and a positive reinforcement plan were waiting. The child who was written off graduated with straight A’s and fours and fives. Ali Olivo, a co-founder of this site, on the families who do not get that choice. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• What's Actually Best for Our Kids, All the Way Down — We started with the school board. A message from a charter school principal, and a question about voucher and Title I money I could not answer, sent us down a rabbit hole. It ended at a charter operation that has paid more than $10 million to its founder's private companies, and at a Lee County school that took families' enrollment and never opened. Underneath all of it is one question. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• What Would It Actually Take to Break the Chain? — A registered Republican who hadn't voted in three elections finally looked at the money. Here's the breakdown.
• The $30 Million Question Behind Lee's Teacher Cuts — The board named a $47 million deficit and pointed to enrollment and lost federal money. All of that is real. But on the district's own list of comparison districts, Lee ranks fourth on teacher pay and eighth on how much of its capital it sends to the classroom. Closing that gap would have covered most of the shortfall, without a single teacher losing a job. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• My Son Is Bright, Bored, and Almost Gone — The students who finish first and then sit with nothing to do are a kind of special need too. They are also the ones Lee County is losing to private school and homeschool. This one is mine, and at thirteen he already sketched the fix. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• Broken Furniture, Broken Promises, Broken Systems — The School District of Lee County runs on nearly $3 billion a year. It still cannot reliably fix a desk, track a repair, or tell a teacher whether she was paid what an arbitrator ordered her to receive. Our fact-check of the checkable claims rides at the bottom.
• The $2.9 Billion Fix: What Lee County Schools Could Do With Tools It Already Has — A companion to Broken Furniture, Broken Promises, Broken Systems. The first piece named the operational and technology debt. This one shows how you start paying it down, with automation that is neither exotic nor expensive. Our fact-check rides at the bottom.
• A Lee County Principal's Resignation Letter, in His Own Words — Last summer, a Lee County principal resigned and sent this letter to district leadership. He shared it with Parents for Transparency to publish for the community. It appears here in his own words, with the names of individual employees withheld. Our fact-check of its checkable claims rides at the bottom.
• A Lawyer in the Room: What Lee County's Furniture Vote Revealed About Liability — One resident's read on the July 21 school board meeting, and why the district's caution around a $4.3 million furniture contract looks less like fiscal prudence and more like legal exposure.