NSU Horizons Spring 2010

31 Faculty Spotlight Ebony Jackson didn’t know what to do when her teenage daughter, Tamaya, began having problems at her public high school in Miami. Struggling with adolescence, Tamaya bounced from the gifted program to the honors program to regular classes, rubbing several teachers the wrong way in the process. “She didn’t have the best reputation,” said Jackson. Then, Jackson heard about Nova Southeastern University’s Florida School Choice Program in North Miami Beach. There, she learned about alter- native school options for her daughter, including magnet schools, charter schools, and homeschooling. Jackson wound up placing her daughter in a small charter school. Tamaya graduated last year in the top 10 percent of her class and is now excelling at junior college. “Because of the small environ- ment, everyone knew Tamaya and me,” Jackson said. “We formed more of a bond with the teachers and the principal.” Some might wonder why NSU, a private uni- versity, has taken the job of educating parents about kindergarten through grade 12 options upon itself. Judith Stein , Ed.D., executive director of the National Institute for Education Options, oversees the program at the Fischler School of Education and Human Services. In 1995, after 21 years in the Miami-Dade School System, she opted for early retirement. After two years of traveling with her husband, she took a temporary job at NSU in the newly formed National Institute for Educational Options. A year later, she took over as director and has been there ever since. Stein started working with all school choices and soon realized that there needed to be a better way to inform parents of their options. She set out hiring a bilingual, diverse group of employees to reach out to South Florida’s diverse community, emphasizing that parents “don’t just have to send their children to the neighborhood school.” To help even more people, particularly in disadvantaged areas, the institute opened 14 parent resource centers in South Florida, and NSU partnered with community organizations. “Light bulbs went on, and we realized we needed to go to places in the community where the parents have trust,” she said. The program really took off when the institute obtained a grant in 2002 from the U.S. Department of Education through the Florida Department of Education. The initial, five-year grant of $200,000 per year enabled NSU to hire contract workers at South Florida’s community centers; expand its staff; and do outreach, videos, brochures, and events. Florida State University received a companion grant for the same program in northern Florida. At first, state officials seemed skeptical of awarding such a grant to a private university. Stein and her crew were summoned to Tallahassee to meet on the issue and peppered with questions by state officials. “They weren’t used to private universities knowing all the rules and regulations,” she said. But, NSU won over state officials. In 2007, the government shut down FSU’s program and gave NSU a $5 million, five-year grant to expand the program throughout Florida. Now, NSU has parent resource centers in Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, West Palm Beach, Pensacola, Quincy, and through- out South Florida. The service also operates out of a host of community centers in Little Haiti, Liberty City, Opa-locka, Little Havana, and other minority neighborhoods. Stein now has a staff of 15 people. Her mission extends to the oversight of NSU’s master’s and doctoral degree programs in charter school administration, the first offered in the coun- try. These programs will teach administrators about managing charter schools, from selecting locations and marketing to furnishing the centers. Is a second retirement on the horizon for Stein, now 70 and a self-proclaimed workaholic? “I love what I’m doing,” she said. n Multiple Choice: Giving Parents and Their Children Educational Options By Julie Kay horizons