Debbie Smith, Aug. 3, 1948 - Oct. 22, 2007, true American hero

[Bussardre@aol.com]

Dear folks:
 
It is with the heaviest of hearts that I inform you of the  passing of Debbie 
Smith of Orlando,  who perhaps more than anyone else I  know was responsible 
for shedding light on the dark side the year-round school  calendar movement 
and the people pushing it.  She was only  59. 
 
Debbie departed this morning at 10 a.m. after a long battle  with breast 
cancer. She waged her first battle against cancer in the early 1990s  and was 
diagnosed with a recurrance about three years ago. 
 
It was the well-researched information Debbie put  together that triggered my 
attention as a journalist to the suspect  school  calendar change movement 
and its operatives and that provided ammunition  for  parents  and groups all 
over this country to stand their ground  against the school calendar change 
agents.
 
I promised her before she died that I would finish my  year-round book, which 
has had many setbacks because of my own family's health  crises. I have asked 
her husband and daughter to hound me until I  finish the book, which I will 
dedicate to her. 
 
Below is an excerpt from a chapter in my book, about 3/4  complete, that I 
wrote shortly after Debbie's cancer came back with a  vengence some 14 years 
later.  Debbie read and approved it.  I  hope it will give you some insight into 
the remarkable person she  was.  She really never got the credit she deserved 
as a year-round  school opposition force. She is truly an unsung hero in the 
ongoing war  against public education. I will never forget her.
 
I am sure Debbie's family members will appreciate your  notes of condolence.  
Write to Jeff and Amanda Smith, 5433 Rustic Pine  Court, Orlando, FL 
32819-7129.
 
Billee Bussard 
 
About Debbie Smith
       Debbie Smith  got involved with theyear-round school issue as 
Education  Committee Chairman of the Orange County Homeowners Association, a 
politically  active group representing some 20,000 Orlando area property owners. She 
agreed to chair the committee in 1989, the year her  husband Jeff became 
association president and her daughter Amanda, their only  child, was a first-grader 
at Dr. Phillips Elementary, which was slated to go on  a year-round calendar. 
Her research and subsequent reports led the homeowners  group to pass a 
resolution Nov. 19, 1991 calling for the school board to return  three pilot 
year-round schools to a traditional calendar as soon as possible and  to not expand 
the calendar in other Orange County schools. Orange County school  officials 
were pushing to make all 85 elementary schools year-round by  1995.
 
The homeowners  “Resolution Opposing Year-Round School”  was a direct slap 
against 56-year-old Dee Parsons, who sat in 1992 as chairman  of the Orange 
County School Board. It was none other than Parsons who in 1985  initiated 
efforts to switch the district’s calendar. Parsons, a Republican, was  first elected 
to the school board in 1984, just a year after Republican President Ronald  
Reagan’s education secretary released A Nation At  Risk, which called for 
drastic school reform, including a longer school  year, as a means to compete in 
a global marketplace. A year after Parsons joined  the school board, the 
National Governors Association, headed by Lamar Alexander  of Tennessee, issued a 
report with a recommended list of education reforms that  included all schools 
switch to a year-round calendar within a few years. Much  was at stake 
politically for Parsons, who by then had positioned himself among  Florida’s 
year-round school leaders determined to make Central Florida, and the  Orange County 
school district specifically, a showcase for calendar  reform. 
The National Association FOR Year-Round Education had,  in fact, staked out 
Florida to begin an east coast expansion, with central  Florida as a major 
focal point.  Florida, in fact, had received federal money during the  Bush (41) 
administration for educational leadership that set up a statewide  network of 
school reform change agents poised to work for calendar reform.  “Project Lead”
 money also paid for a  134-page monograph published in 1993 singing praises 
of Florida’s year-round  calendar efforts that was written and distributed 
nationwide precisely as the  Florida pilot program was imploding because of high 
costs, poor testing outcomes  and parent dissatisfaction. That fact was left 
out of the  monograph.  
By the 1992-93 school year, 32 of Florida’s 50  year-round schools were in  
six central Florida counties--Brevard, Lake,  Orange, Osceola, Seminole and 
Volusia.  In 1990, Orange County placed three schools on a multitrack year-round  
calendar. Beginning in school year 1993-94, half of Orange County’s 85  
elementary schools and a third of Seminole elementary and middle schools were  
scheduled to be on a year-round calendar, with the goal to place all  elementaries 
and some middle schools in both districts on it by 1995. 
The process had been underway for years.  NAYRE first sent its operatives to 
lobby  influential, business and political leaders and state officials.  In 
1987, NAYRE kingpins addressed the  Florida Committee of 100, and shortly 
thereafter Florida TaxWatch, a  conservative watchdog group, signed onto year-round 
school.  The first conference of the Florida Association for Year-round  
Education  (FAYRE, Inc.), supported  by a grant from the Florida Department of 
Education, was held Oct. 28-29 1990,  in Orlando.  
During  the early1990s, two Florida year-round school change agents would 
reign as  president of NAYRE:  One was R.J.  “Skip” Archibald, who as an elected 
(1984) school superintendent in Marion  County made his school district 
Florida’s pilot for year-round education in 1987, a year after the National  
Governors embraced calendar change.  
Archibald’s Marion County School District is 60 miles  northwest of Orange 
County. He presided as President of the Florida Association  of Year-Round 
Schools at its first convention in 1990. In NAYRE’s annual directory of year-round 
schools for the 1992-93,  Archibald, then president, is identified as Chief 
Executive Officer, Cooperative  Education Extension System of Florida, 
University of North Florida. The job was  created for him by Florida Education 
Secretary Betty Castor after Archibald  decided to NOT seek re-election for school 
superintendent in 1992, and after he  was turned down in April 1992 for the 
appointed post of Seminole County school  superintendent.  
“It cost Marion County about $750,000 more a year to  operate a multitrack 
school instead of a traditional calendar,” said John Smith,  who succeeded 
Archibald. 
The other NAYRE president from Florida was L. Diane  Locker, Orange County 
year-round school coordinator, who presided over the group  in school year 
1995-96.  NAYRE  convention-goers from all over the country got instructions from 
her on the  “The Politics and  Planning” for a year-round school calendar.  
Postings  about year-round school on the Prodigy bulletin board, a relatively 
new computer  information exchange service launched in 1987, did not come to 
Debbie’s  attention until after she had written reports for the homeowners 
group.  Prodigy was to become a popular and  effective source of information on 
school calendar developments, providing a  nationwide hookup to parents and 
educators engaged in calendar  fights.  A Christmas gift from her husband in  
1992 was, in fact, the Prodigy service, which Debbie used to continue following  
year-round school developments. .... 
Ironically, when Debbie showed up at her first school  board meeting in 1989 
to do research for the homeowners group, she was inclined  to believe an 
all-year school year might be a good idea. She had a background in  education, 
having graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in  home economics 
education. But her perspective quickly changed to doubt after  listening to 
presentations by groups of parents at that meeting who, after doing  their 
homework on year-round school organized in opposition to the pilot  programs at 
three Orlando schools: Aloma, Palm  Lake and Tangelo Park. Research by these 
parents provided a stark contrast to  the mostly positive picture of the 
multitrack calendar painted in reports  generated by school officials.  
Debbie  spent thousands of hours in libraries looking at professional 
journals and other  publications. She also spent countless hours attending 
informational and school  board meetings on year-round school and double-checking 
information supplied by  the Orange County school administration. Her spare bedroom 
was soon overflowing  with piles of news clips, research reports and other 
documents. Pulling facts  and figures from the mounds of research, she wrote with 
great clarity on the  dangers and detriments of calendar change to unnerve 
the Orange County calendar  change  forces 
Haunting Facts on  ‘Phantom’  Schools 
Debbie Smith determined from her research that one of  the biggest 
misrepresentations on calendar change benefits was the promised  savings from  “phantom”
  schools.  These are the bricks and  mortar schools that the district wouldn’
t have to build by using a multitrack  calendar to expand capacity in 
existing school buildings. Orange County school  officials estimated savings of 
nearly $64 million over three years every time a  year-round calendar was used to 
avoid construction of 9  “phantom” schools at construction costs  of about  $7 
million a piece plus  miscellaneous expenses. It’s false economics, she  
concluded. 
“These large projected savings—$64 million—have the  effect of dazzling the 
mind and preventing closer evaluation,” Debbie would  write later in the OCHA 
News, the homeowners  association newsletter.  
“Because YRS cost so much more to operate yearly, if you  multiply the costs 
out over a five- or six-year period you could afford to build  and operate the 
so-called ‘phantom school.’ At the end of this period you would  have 
purchased the land and building for the same money, rather than just having  money 
paid out in increased operating costs with nothing tangible to show for  it.”  
Debbie’s detailed explanation of the problems with the  year-round calendar 
concept appeared in a special  9-page February 1992 edition of OCHA News. The 
special issue was  published in response to a letter Dee Parson’s sent to the 
homeowners  group charging Debbie’s research and  presentations as biased and a 
misrepresentation of fact.  [Parson’s letter and excerpts from  Debbie’s 
rebuttal are provided in the book] Debbie’s article in the OCHA News  begins: 
“Mr. Parsons’  letter . . . suggests that I have only presented ‘biased’ 
information to [OCHA]  membership. I find this a particularly ironic accusation 
as I have attended many  YRS presentations…by Orange Counting Public School 
staff and other supporters of  YRS and have never attended one where there was a 
true pro/con discussion of the  issues. These have only been what they choose 
to call ‘information sessions’  where administration staff have tied to ‘sell
’ this program to the public. . .   
“As to who is  biased in presenting information…I quote from The Year-Round 
Education Task  Force Report, dated 11/12/91: 
“The  concept of year-round education was brought to the attention of the 
Orange  County school system staff as early as 1985 when School Board member Dee 
Parsons  suggested that the district consider it as an alternative which might 
address  the growing student population in Orange County. A district 
objective was  developed to review the results of legislative efforts. . . relative to 
 year-round schools and report on implications for Orange County by June 30,  
1987. 
“Mr. Parsons was  one of the first and remains one of the strongest 
proponents of the YRS program,  but that does not necessarily mean he is right.  
Especially in light of more recent  information that I have reviewed from school 
districts which have operated these  programs for a number of years. I prefer to 
think of our resolution as a list of  serious concerns rather than biased 
information.” 
Debbie’s rebuttal concludes  with the following points: 
1.      Money that should be going to  educating children in the classroom 
and into teachers’ salaries is going instead  into an expensive new scheduling 
system. 
2.      If you have read this entire special  YRS newsletter then you should 
be questioning the statement by Mr. Parsons that  YRS is the only significant 
alternative to solving space problems.    
San Diego City Schools, the home base of the NAYRE, now has strict  
guidelines for putting schools on multitrack.  They have found portables to be much  
cheaper. They are also putting restrictions on schools going single track  
because they do their student counts daily and so many children are absent  during 
the summer, it is costing them too much money.  Diane Fardig’s report [for 
Orange  County] states that parents and students were very happy with 
intercessions at  the Tangelo Park (YRS pilot).  But I  found it interesting that 
enrollment went  down with each succeeding intercession, the lowest enrollment being 
during the summer.  There was a difference of almost 100 children. 
1.      YRS does not decrease class  size.  You have five third grades on  
traditional and you’ll have five third-grades on YRS.  They just won’t be in 
school at the same  time.  The only way to reduce class  size is to hire more 
teachers. 
2.      There is great debate over the issue  of whether YRS actually 
improves academics.  
3.      It is my hope that the next time you  attend a YRS “information 
session,” that you will now be able to listen with a  whole new level of knowledge. 
If  you agree that there is merit to our concerns, then perhaps you will 
consider  taking the next step in the process and let your school board members 
know that  you are concerned. When they see empty auditorium seats, and don’t 
receive phone  calls on an issue, they assume everything is fine and you are 
happy with their  decisions.  
A copy of Dee Parsons’ letter also was submitted and printed as Letter to the 
 Editor in the Feb. 6, 1992 issue of The West Orange Times. The paper printed 
 Smith’s rebuttal letter Feb. 27, 1992.   
Dee Parsons’ attempt to discredit  Debbie Smith followed her effective 
presentations on the detriments of calendar  change in surrounding counties.  
In mid-November 1991, she was asked  by a parent to speak to the Osceola 
County School Board. Debbie’s Osceola  presentation fell a week before she was 
scheduled to give the same talk at a  hearing  
of the Orange County school board on  whether to expand the year-round 
calendar to ALL schools by 1995. Debbie  believes the Orange County hearing was 
deliberately scheduled the week of  Thanksgiving when many families that otherwise 
might have attended the meeting  were busy with company or headed out of 
town. And so turnout was low at the  school calendar change hearing. 
Her  willingness to help other districts may have undermined efforts in her 
own. The  Orange County school board voted to  expand YRS to 60 schools after 
her abbreviated presentation at the  hearing.  She explained the situation in 
the  OCHA News: 
“Through a long series  of events, I was contacted by a parent in Osceola 
County who was upset because  the school board was voting to expand [the 
year-round calendar] after only a  couple of months into their pilot year (sound 
familiar?).  She wanted to know if I had any  information I could share with her.  
I explained that I happened to have these packets [of information] made  up 
[for the Nov. 26 presentation to the  Orange County  School Board] and I would 
be glad to bring them down and present this  information to the Osceola County 
School Board.  
“The Osceola School Board allowed me time to present my information,  asking 
numerous questions. After listening to me and concerned parents from  their 
county, they voted that night four to one to not expand its  
program,  to form a committee to do further research  on the issue, and to 
put YRS on the ballot in March (later changed to November)  for a non-binding 
vote.  “This was a  major accomplishment as it is the first time I know of that 
parents and property  owners in any county of Florida have ever had a chance 
to vote on  YRS. 
“The only  problem with doing this presentation in Osceola was that I was 
sure that much of  the information that I discussed that evening would prejudice 
my ability to do  the same presentation the next week in Orange County. 
“Sadly, I was  right.  On the evening before the  public hearing in Orange 
County, I received a call from the school board  secretary informing me that Mr. 
Parsons (newly elected as school board  chairperson) had decided to limit 
individual presentations from the public to  five-minute intervals.  I was told  
that this was going to be strictly enforced. 
“You should know  that under Mr. Bill Barnes, the immediate past chair for 
the school board,  discussion was allowed to continue as long as new information 
was being  presented or as long as it took to thoroughly cover an issue.  
This is the premise I used in putting  these  [information] packets  together.  I 
had assumed that my  complete packet of information opposing YRS would be 
heard and, since so much of  my information was current, here was a good chance 
that the school board members  would not have had this kind of input from 
anyone else.   
“At the  beginning of my presentation, I explained that I wanted to read my 
resolution  into the record and hopefully what they heard in the resolution 
would be of such  a nature as to have them waive the five-minute rule and let me 
present the  back-up [information in the] packet.   
“Mr. Drew  Thomas, school board attorney, was keeping time and as I finished 
the first page  of the resolution, he announced that 51/2 minutes had elapsed. 
 I attempted to get my time extended but  was curtly informed that I had to 
sit down.   
“I then informed  Mr. Parsons that he should be aware of the fact that this 
same packet of  information had been presented in Osceola County the week 
before and based on  the information therein along with citizen concerns had caused 
them to agree to  put the issue on the ballot for a vote.  I was extremely 
disappointed that our school board was unwilling to  consider my information, 
but under their rules I had to retire the  podium. 
“Of the  literally thousands of people who could and should, have been  
at  this hearing, there were only five people who spoke to the resolution and 
a  handful more in attendance.  It is  for this reason that I have gone into 
such detail in giving you this summary of  events surrounding the hearing to 
consider input before voting to expand YRS  into every elementary school in 
Orange County by 1995.” 
This  account in the OCHA News, along with the resolution and Debbie’s 
lengthy  rebuttal to the school board’s arguments for year-round calendar, was later 
 circulated nationwide and proved to be  
dynamite in blowing apart efforts of school calendar  change agents 
elsewhere. It helped prepare parents and educators there for the  year-round calendar 
propaganda war and the nasty political maneuvering that  often accompanies it.  
As a  journalist trying to assess whether year-round school had merit, it was 
an  instructive read. It also provided a basis for comparison of stories from 
other  communities where the arguments and the political maneuverings for 
calendar  change were eerily similar. 
NAYRE’s Orange County operatives won the short-term  battle, but it was a 
costly victory because it provided the resolve for Debbie  and other Orange 
County parents to assist parents across the nation with  information that stopped 
similar efforts dead in their  tracks. 
Debbie's closing words in the OCHA Newsletter  proved to be prophetic: 
“If  we don’t do something, in less than a few years we will be in the same 
position  as Marion County, Fla.  The YRS  programs will ultimately fail after 
the public has had to actually live with the  YRS calendar multitracking for 
3-4 years.  School board and administration staff responsible for bringing YRS 
to the  district will loose their jobs and most importantly, in this time of 
tight  budgets, public funds will have been wasted and additional funds will 
be  required to dismantle the program and return to a traditional  calendar.” 
Orange County returned to a traditional calendar in  school year in 1995-96.  
To my knowledge, there is  no final analysis of what this experiment  cost.  
Orange County Superintendent James Schott, in charge when the  mechanisms for 
converting to a year-round calendar were put in place, would  leave to become 
director of an Orlando arts group. 
Locker would move to  another state and take an administrative job in 
education.    
Marion County School Superintendent Archibald would become an  unsuccessful 
candidate for Superintendent of Seminole County but land a cushy  job that paid 
$100,000--a job created for him by  Florida Education Secretary Betty Castor, 
a  year-round school proponent. [Details in a later chapter.]  
Both Archibald and  Locker would continue as year-round consultants, 
commanding as much as $2,000 a  day, and would continue to be participants and 
presenters at NAYRE  conventions. 
Debbie Smith was paid exactly NOTHING for the research  she did for the 
homeowners group.  
In summer 1992, just a few months after the Orange  County School Board voted 
to put some 60 schools on a year-round calendar,  Debbie would be diagnosed 
with Hodgkin’s disease AND breast cancer. Now needing  all the energy she could 
must for the fight of her life, Debbie bowed out of the  Orange County fray 
for the time being, but between chemo therapy and doctor  appointments, she 
continued to research the issue and help people from all over  the state and the 
country who called needing calendar research. She was  confident the eventual 
undoing of year-round school would be its  expansion  efforts because 
experiences in other communities had shown the  more parents, children and educators 
who experience the calendar, the louder the  noise becomes against it and the 
greater pressure to end it.  
While recovering from her illnesses inthe early 1990s,  she became something 
of a stealth force in Florida’s calendar wars. She quietly  assisted Florida 
groups around the state who found the year-round school  pitchmen on their 
doorsteps. She alerted a group of activists to a  state-level school facilities 
advisory  committee meeting held in Orlando the day before Thanksgiving in which 
critical  decisions on the year-round calendar were up for a vote. To  the 
surprise  of the committee members, which included lawyers from high-profile law 
firms and  construction companies, more than a dozen activist showed up armed 
with facts  and figures that swayed a final recommendation by the committee 
to back away  from using a year-round calendar in the state’s master plan for 
Florida school  facilities. [More on this in a later chapter.] 
Debbie  also alerted a network of activists to a little-known  Legislative 
hearing on year-round school  in Orlando, which filled an auditorium with some  
400 people, most of them opponents of year-round school. The turnout was all 
the  more remarkable because so many who had come from all corners of the state 
had  to drive through high winds and torrential rains of  a tropical storm  
that swept the state that day. The high  turnout of angry parents and educators 
forced lawmakers to keep a hearing  expected to last from 7 to 9 p.m. going 
until nearly midnight and proved to be a  setback for more legislation to 
encourage a move to a year-round calendar. [More  on this in another chapter.] 
Along the way, Debbie made many new friends from all  over the state and the 
country. They were liberals and conservatives, Democrats  and Republicans, 
agnostics as well as Christian-right activists. Topping the  list of fiery 
calendar warriors was Nancy Stacy, a mother of four from Ocala who  effectively led 
the fight against Florida’s year-round calendar pilot  program  in Marion 
County and who, like Debbie, shared her research with  people from all over the 
country.   
Nancy was the first real obstacle to NAYRE’s Florida’s  push, and was the 
organizations worst nightmare.  The petite blonde mother of four has  
indefatigable energy, and an inquiring mind. Like Debbie, she was a stay-at-home  mom 
who had the time to check out NAYRE’s claims. Her research included speaking  
directly with officials in school districts across the country that had  
experimented with a year-round school calendar to counter NAYRE claims of  academic 
and cost benefits. Copies of Nancy’s research, which included letters  and data 
from school districts around the nation refuting year-round school  success 
stories, would also find their way across the country to defeat school  
calendar change proposals during the 1990s in school districts coast to coast,  
including Oregon, Washington, Maine and Maryland. 
Debbie also became  part of the NOYRE network, a by-invitation-only chat 
group founded by Wes  Walker, an Arizona father of  7.  NOYRE moderator is Rodger 
Holtin, an Arkansas Dad with a great instant recall of  year-round school 
facts and figures.  

.  The  NOYRE group has included people from all  religious, political and 
economic backgrounds—from college professors and  researchers to parents who 
were just plain frustrated with year-round school and  its politics. They 
included Maryland lawyer Robert Rosenfeld, who as a parent  did several “legal briefs”
 in opposition to year-round school, thoroughly  documenting each point, 
often with hard data he retrieved personally from school  districts across the 
nation. Like many parents, he spent hundreds of dollars out  of his own pocket 
gathering the information. The information he presented to the  Montgomery 
County school board became known as the Rosenfeld papers and were  widely 
circulated.  
 
In the days before Internet websites, the  Rosenfeld Papers, like the OCHA 
News letter written by Debbie Smith, were  vital documents in thwarting summer’s 
Grinch—the year-round school  movement.  





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