Students, superintendents fume over decision to close College of Education

Pictured Above: Conner Diefendorf (left), Spencer Bazen and Layali Haifa arranged a rally Friday to urge the university to reconsider its decision.

Aya Diab | The Crow’s Nest

By Aya Diab

USF education majors staged a small rally Friday to show support for the College of Education as opposition to the university’s stunning decision to dismantle and reconfigure the college reverberated across the public school districts it has long served.

“I didn’t know where the University of South Florida can find the funds to keep one of their most important colleges on their campus, but, Mr. President (Steve) Currall, that is not my job; that is your job,” said Spencer Bazen, a junior education major.

“You and the University of South Florida have shown that you care more about profit than you care about finding the funds to keep this great college on your campus.”

Bazen was one of about 20 members of the USF community – all masked and socially distanced – who attended the rally on the Tampa campus, with another 60 participating by livestream.

He was joined by Conner Diefendorf, who started a petition on Oct. 16 that has now gained 15,616 signatures, and Layali Haifa, who told The Crow’s Nest that closing the College of Education is “beyond ridiculous.”

“Education is everywhere around us without us realizing (it),” Haifa told the rally. “Education is way more important than profit. We are in a universe right now where teachers are needed the most and the fact that they are cutting our funds completely is unacceptable.”

In an interview with The Crow’s Nest, Haifa said she hoped for Currall’s attention.

“Hopefully it comes to the attention of the president himself (Currall), and our voices will be heard enough for it to be stopped.”

In an interview, Diefendorf said the rally was organized “to bring awareness to not just this injustice that is happening at USF but injustice to teachers that are everywhere.”

“The school isn’t an elective; it is a necessity (for) the production of future USF students,” he said.

University administrators have said that closing the College of Education and reconfiguring it into a graduate school of education that falls under another college will save USF $6.8 million over two years.

They have stressed that all undergraduate education majors will be able to complete their bachelor’s degrees. The university will continue to turn out teachers through a master’s program for students who have earned a four-year degree in other fields, they said.

The student rally capped a week of forceful pushback on the university’s decision from the public school districts in the Tampa Bay area that the College of Education has served for decades.

In an opinion column in the Tampa Bay Times, the school superintendents in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Manatee, Sarasota and Polk counties said they were blindsided by the move, which they called “a terrible mistake” and a “short-sighted and ill-considered way out” of USF’s budget crisis.

The School Board in Pinellas County, which has hired hundreds of College of Education graduates in recent years, approved a resolution condemning the closure and asking USF to reconsider.

And more than 200 educators joined a Zoom call organized by the Pinellas Education Foundation – a nonprofit coalition that supports public education – to emphasize that closing the College of Education will make a shortage of strong teacher applicants even worse.

Judith Ponticell, the college’s interim dean, listened during the Zoom call and stressed that USF intends to continue preparing good teachers for local school districts.

In an opinion column in the Times, Ponticell, Currall and Provost Ralph Wilcox defended the university’s move, which they called a “preliminary proposal.”

They cited the “budget realities of a world changed by COVID-19,” a 63 percent drop in enrollment over the last decade and the emergence of other institutions that offer undergraduate baccalaureate programs, “some at a significantly lower cost.”