Polk County Public Schools
The purpose of this website is to create a resource to serve educators ranging from teachers to district personnel to access information that is helpful in a variety of ways.
As this is a five year grant, this website will be a progressive project as more resources and information are added on an ongoing basis. Please visit our website often and we welcome feedback by emailing Carla McMullen, Polk County School Board Choice Specialist at carla.mcmullen@polk-fl.net.
The Polk County Voluntary Public School Choice (VPSC) project will create and maintain a powerful coalition of school districts which will share resources and best practices to intensely focus on increasing choice options for all students with an emphasis on low performing, disengaged and disenfranchised secondary school students. This project includes primary partnerships between Polk, Osceola and Hillsborough Counties as well as expanded partnerships to also include Indian River, Lake, Manatee, Orange, Pasco and Sumter Counties. The project focuses on assuring academic success for students via expanded district choice options, interdistrict agreements and career academies at traditional public, choice and charter schools.
Goal 1 – Develop and refine meaningful district choice options such as NCLB choice, charter schools, and choice schools; as well as interdistrict transfers which will impact 200 traditional public, choice or charter school students while increasing the opportunities for students to move between the districts of Polk, Osceola and Hillsborough Counties. Identify and develop solutions to barriers to choice in the three primary districts as well as the six supporting districts within this proposal.
Goal 2 – Based on national models, create a comprehensive, sequential model for the development and implementation of career academies and middle school pre academies at traditional public, choice and charter schools, currently serving 114 academies and expanding to 195 over the next five years in 9 central Florida districts.
Each quarterly report and annual report provides the progress towards each goal and indicators:
Year 2: October 1, 2008 - September 30, 2009
Year 3: October 1, 2009 - September 30, 2010
Year 4: October 1, 2010 - September 30, 2011
Year 5: October 1, 2011 - September 30, 2012
Flordia Public School Choice Consortium (FPSCC) quarterly newsletter articles:
National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) awards Polk County with The 2009 Award for Excellence in Improving Practice
Marketing brochures have been developed for several VPSC partners: