Where I Stand on the Biggest Challenges Facing Our School Board

By Curtis Campogni, Candidate for Pinellas County School Board (District 3 – At-Large)

There is no shortage of areas where we need to improve.

Some challenges are large and districtwide. Others are more targeted to specific students, schools, employees or communities. I have ideas and priorities across that entire spectrum.

But one of the most common questions I am asked is: What are the most pressing issues facing the Pinellas County School Board?

My answer is:

Public school enrollment and consolidation.

Teacher engagement and retention.

And while the solutions to those challenges will look very different, I believe the same question should guide the decisions we make:

How will this improve student success?

Jump to a Section

• Enrollment & Consolidation

  • Recruit Families

  • Retain Families

  • Engage the Community

  • Responsibly Use District Property

• Teacher Engagement & Retention

  • Hear Them

  • Empower Them

  • Pay Them

• It All Comes Back to Students

Enrollment and Consolidation: Trust. Recruit. Retain. Engage.

Enrollment, at its core, is a trust issue.

When I talk about building trust, I am not suggesting that families don't trust our schools or that trust has somehow been lost across the board. Trust isn't that simple, and it isn't static.

We all have people and institutions we trust at different levels. That trust can grow stronger or weaker based on our experiences with them. The same is true of our schools. Every interaction, every decision and every response to a challenge is an opportunity to strengthen that relationship.

Our responsibility is to continually earn, build and nurture that trust.

Families have more educational options than ever. If we want families to choose Pinellas County Schools, and continue choosing them, we have to continually earn their confidence.

That means listening to families, communicating honestly, providing programs and opportunities they value, supporting the teachers educating their children, and demonstrating through our decisions that student success comes first.

Telling families that public schools are important isn't enough. We have to give them reasons to choose us.

Pinellas County is already confronting declining enrollment, underutilized campuses and difficult decisions about the future of individual schools.

Consolidation may sometimes be necessary. But closing and combining schools cannot become our enrollment strategy.

We cannot talk seriously about consolidation without being equally serious about recruitment and retention.

Recruit

We need to start communicating with families before they decide where their children will attend school.

That means building relationships with young families through early-learning providers, childcare centers, colleges, hospitals and organizations serving new and expecting parents.

Our recruitment strategy should combine face-to-face community engagement with a much stronger digital experience.

If I am a parent considering Pinellas County Schools, it should not be difficult to understand my options.

I would like to see us rethink the district's digital experience and explore responsible uses of AI that allow parents to easily ask questions, compare programs and schools, identify opportunities that fit their child, and quickly find the information they need.

My own family is a good example of why I believe we need to do this better.

Our path to parenthood looked a little different. 

We adopted our children through Florida's foster care system, which meant we didn't have the same long runway some families have to think about where our children would eventually attend school. Suddenly, that decision was in front of us.

We considered public, private and charter schools. And at the time, I probably knew 5% of what I know today about the programs, opportunities and choices available within Pinellas County Schools.

Yes, I could have done more research as a parent. I own that. But I had also spent roughly 15 years working in systems that serve young people. If someone with that background wasn't fully aware of what our public schools had to offer, that told me we had a recruitment and communication opportunity.

We came very close to choosing private school.

That experience has stayed with me because families shouldn't have to discover the case for our public schools on their own. We should be making that case to them.

And we shouldn't only talk to families before they make their decision. We also need to talk to families who have already chosen something else.

Private school families. Charter school families. Homeschool families.

Instead of assuming we know why they made those choices, let's ask them.

Why did you choose another option?

What mattered most in your decision?

What would PCS have to offer or change for you to consider a public school?

Not every conversation will result in a student returning to PCS next semester. That's okay.

A family that chooses another educational option when their child is six may make a different decision when that child is 11 or 14. We should understand their concerns, learn from their experience and keep that relationship open.

If the district cannot conduct that type of research and engagement at the necessary scale, I would be open to exploring outside expertise to help us do it.

Retain

Recruitment means very little if families already attending our schools decide to leave.

Retention starts with the student experience.

Are students thriving?

Are they learning and engaged?

Are we preparing them for what comes next?

Those questions have to be at the center of retention. We should be asking whether students are spending their days engaged in meaningful learning and educational development, or whether too much of their experience is being consumed by screens, constant behavioral disruptions and preparing for the next test.

When we make decisions about programs, partnerships, teacher support, career and technical education, mental health services or resources for underserved students, we should continually ask what those decisions mean for the students sitting in our classrooms.

Families need to see their children learning, growing and excited about school.

They need strong programs and opportunities.

They need teachers who feel supported.

They need confidence that when there is a problem, the district will communicate honestly and respond.

And they need to believe that their child is known, challenged and supported.

I was reminded recently just how closely all of this is connected.

I spoke with two high-performing public school teachers. These are the kind of educators you would want teaching your own children. Yet both had recently made the decision to place their own children in private school.

Think about the impact of that.

It matters for those individual families, of course. But it doesn't stop there.

Neighbors talk. Parents talk. Families ask teachers they know where they send their own children and why. When a respected public school teacher chooses something different for their own child, other parents are naturally going to ask what led to that decision.

My point is simple: We should be more curious.

What caused two people who know our public schools from the inside to make a different choice for their own families?

What can we learn from them?

And are there changes we can make that would cause families like theirs to choose our schools in the future?

That's what retention requires. It isn't simply keeping an enrollment number from going down.

It's creating a student experience that makes families want to stay.

That's how we retain families.

And that's how we continue building trust.

Engage the Community

I believe we need to rethink the relationship between a school and the community surrounding it.

A school shouldn't simply be a building that students enter in the morning and leave in the afternoon.

It can become a center of the community.

The K-8 model provides an interesting opportunity to explore this approach. A strong K-8 school can potentially give students, staff and families years of stability within the same school community.

But simply putting "K-8" on a building doesn't accomplish that.

We should bring the surrounding community to the table.

Can local recreation centers help expand athletics or activities?

Can libraries become stronger partners in literacy and programming?

Can municipalities partner with schools on events or infrastructure?

Can local government and community partners help us explore housing opportunities for school employees?

Can businesses and nonprofit organizations help provide childcare and other supportive services for families and staff?

Those partnerships should also extend to workforce development.

Our schools should understand the economies of the communities they serve.

If employers in St. Petersburg, Clearwater or another part of Pinellas are struggling to fill particular occupations, we should be asking whether students in those communities have pathways into those careers.

That could mean career and technical education, industry credentials, dual enrollment, apprenticeships or partnerships with local employers.

We should hold community-specific listening sessions that include employers, workforce organizations, families and educators so we understand what degrees, credentials and skills are most needed locally.

If a particular career is in high demand in St. Petersburg, for example, we should be asking a simple question:

Do students attending public school in that community have a pathway to it?

The needs of each community will be different.

That's why the conversation has to happen locally.

Our enrollment challenge is also connected to a larger demographic reality: fewer school-age children means we have to think beyond simply competing for the families who are here today.

We want students to graduate, find meaningful opportunities here, build careers here and, if they choose to have families, be able to raise those families here.

That's another reason the connection between our schools, local employers, municipalities and workforce system matters so much.

When we create pathways from the classroom to credentials, careers and economic opportunity right here in Pinellas County, we're not only preparing students for their first job. We're giving them more reasons to build their lives here.

And years from now, some of those same students may be the parents deciding where to send their own children to school.

That's the long-term enrollment strategy: build schools that strengthen communities, and communities where the next generation wants to stay.

Responsibly Use the Property We Own

We also need to take a hard look at the property and land owned by Pinellas County Schools.

As enrollment changes, we shouldn't automatically hold onto property indefinitely simply because we might need it again someday.

That does not mean selling property simply because enrollment declines.

We should consider realistic enrollment projections, future educational needs, opportunities for community partnerships and the long-term value of an asset before making those decisions.

But a wait-and-see approach has a cost too.

When property is determined to no longer be necessary for the district's long-term educational needs, I believe we should be willing to sell or otherwise responsibly use that asset rather than simply maintaining property we no longer need.

To the extent permitted by law, I would want the proceeds from those decisions reinvested into strengthening the schools and educational facilities that will serve our communities into the future.

That means asking what we can add to those schools that makes the next generation of parents want to choose them.

Better programs. Better facilities. Innovative learning opportunities. Career pathways. Extracurricular opportunities. Community partnerships.

If consolidation requires us to make difficult decisions about which facilities we continue operating, then we should also be willing to use our assets strategically to make the schools that remain stronger, more innovative and more attractive to future families.

Teacher Engagement and Retention

We cannot build the strongest public school system possible without great teachers.

And I believe our approach to teacher engagement and retention can be summarized in three words:

Hear them. Empower them. Pay them.

Hear Them

Listening cannot be performative.

If we ask teachers for their perspective, their perspective should have an opportunity to actually shape policy.

As a Board member, I want a consistent way to pressure-test major ideas with educators before I vote on decisions that significantly affect their classrooms.

That means intentionally seeking a diverse range of teacher perspectives from North, Central and South Pinellas rather than repeatedly hearing from the same small group of people.

Whether that ultimately becomes a formal coalition or an informal network, I want educators doing the work every day to have a direct line into my decision-making.

I also support truly anonymous teacher surveys.

But I don't only want to measure satisfaction.

I want to solicit solutions.

What district requirement takes time away from instruction without producing enough value?

What would you change?

What support are you missing?

What would make you more likely to stay?

The people closest to a problem often have ideas about how to solve it. We should be asking them.

For new teachers, listening also needs to come with support.

I would like to see a more individualized coaching approach that develops teachers throughout their first year rather than relying primarily on one-time training. Support should be phased, practical and responsive to what that teacher is actually experiencing in the classroom.

Empower Them

Over time, we have asked teachers to become far more than instructors.

We ask them to teach, administer tests, manage behavior, communicate with parents, document data, complete training, navigate administrative requirements and, at times, fill roles that resemble counselor, social worker and case manager.

Some of those responsibilities are unavoidable.

But we should be relentless about asking which ones aren't.

I want a serious review of district-required training, testing, documentation, credentialing and administrative assignments.

Which requirements are required by state or federal law?

Which genuinely improve instruction?

Which can be streamlined?

And which can we stop doing?

The goal should be simple: return as much of a teacher's time as reasonably possible to teaching students.

Empowerment also means professional trust.

And let's acknowledge the elephant in the room.

The years from 2020 through 2022 were particularly difficult for public education. Culture wars, ideological debates and politics increasingly found their way into conversations about our classrooms, with political and advocacy groups on multiple sides becoming increasingly involved in local education debates and school board meetings.

Whatever side of those debates someone was on, I believe they contributed to an environment where many educators became more cautious about speaking up, trying something different or exercising creativity in their classrooms.

We need to move forward from that.

Teachers should absolutely be accountable to academic standards, district policy and the families they serve. But accountability and professional autonomy are not opposites.

We should create a culture where a great teacher can bring an idea forward, challenge an ineffective practice, try a different instructional approach or tell leadership that something isn't working without wondering whether speaking up will make them a target.

That's the kind of professional trust I mean when I talk about empowering teachers.

Pay Them

Finally, we have to talk about compensation.

That starts with salary, but it doesn't end there.

We need stronger advocacy at the state level for teacher compensation while also taking a hard look at our own budget and asking whether dollars further removed from the direct student experience can be redirected toward the people working directly with students.

We also need to look at the total economic reality of being an educator in Pinellas County.

Health insurance matters.

Housing matters.

Childcare matters.

If we want talented educators to build careers here, we should explore every responsible tool available to make staying here financially sustainable.

But the bottom line is simple: no more excuses.

We can continue talking about state funding, budget limitations and all the reasons increasing compensation is difficult. Those realities matter, and we have to work within them.

But our job is to find solutions within those realities, not use them as an excuse for inaction.

We need to prioritize competitive compensation for the teachers and school staff who work directly with our students.

It All Comes Back to Students

Enrollment and teacher retention may sound like two different challenges.

I don't think they are.

Families are more likely to choose and remain in schools where they trust the people educating their children, see stability and believe their children are receiving a great education.

Teachers are more likely to stay where they feel heard, supported, trusted and valued.

Strong teachers improve the student experience.

A strong student experience builds family trust.

Family trust strengthens enrollment.

And stronger enrollment gives us more stability to invest in our schools.

That's why, whether we're talking about enrollment, teachers, facilities, programs or budgets, I keep coming back to the same question:

How does this improve student success?

If we can't answer that question, we should be willing to question why we're doing it.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of Curtis Campogni, Candidate for Pinellas County School Board, District 3 (At-Large), and do not represent the official position of any organization or governing body.