Public Profile

MaryEllen Elia is a very powerful and influential woman in the city of Tampa and amongst the members of the Hillsborough County School Board. Actually she is currently the Superintendent of that school board and has been so since May of 2005. Over the past few years she has proved to be a figure that has drawn both praise and criticism. She has dealt with issues ranging from schools that are falling apart to the busing issue that affected almost half of the children in Hillsborough County. Elia’s resume does not read quite as well as some of the candidates that applied for the very job she currently holds. At no point in her career has she ever been a superintendent or even an assistant superintendent before, in fact she never has even been a principal of a school before. All that being said she was still given the opportunity to run the Hillsborough County School system and to do what she believes is best for it.

Her experience does include being the chief facilities officer for the Hillsborough County School Board from 2003 to 2005. In addition to that one of her major accomplishments was helping to create the magnet schools program in Hillsborough County during the year of 1991. For her efforts she won the Magnet Schools of America Presidential Leadership Award which is an accomplishment in and of itself. All of this started when Elia joined the Hillsborough district in 1986 as a reading resource teacher at Plant High School. Her education consist of a bachelors of arts and history degree from Daeman College, and a master’s of professional studies in K-12 reading along with a master’s of education in social studies from the University of Buffalo.

To this point in her tenure her stint as superintendent has been viewed by some as a disaster and by others as a success. While that can be said about almost every pubic official this time it is truer than ever. It seems every issue that comes across Elia’s desk is a major one and it also seems to catch the attention of the press, and it does so quickly. The biggest hot button issue that has got the entire area in a firestorm is the issue with busing and how it is negatively affecting the children of Hillsborough County. All of these issues arose when the county decided one good way to cut back on spending was to be more efficient and place bus stops farther apart, cancel out special bus stops for to families that live less than two miles from the school their child attends and also cut bus services to a variety of after school day care centers. Of course all of this was made much worse with the extreme lack of communication by the school board. Once the parents of the community caught wind of these changes they all started to call in around the same time which leads to jammed phone lines and mass confusion. It seems that they were trying to implement the plan without all the pieces in place as in late 2009 or early 2010 they are going to have a website available to parents to check the bus stops and routes of buses. After much haggling back and forth over how to fix this problem it seems that the complaints have quieted done a bit but this problem is far from solved and probably will get worse before it gets better.

Another major black eye for Elia is the complaint filed on the behalf of three disabled students in early October of 2008. This complaint was filed with the Florida Department of Education and caught Elia by complete surprise as she first learned about it the day after the complaint was filed. As it reads the complaint is alleging that the Hillsborough County School system is nothing more than a pipeline to the schools to the local prisons. While everyone involved believes this is a statewide problem it is the district that is run by Elia that was called to task and must once again respond with a quick and steady solution. To make matters worse for Elia the three disabled student’s named in the case were all minorities so she not only has the disability issue to concern herself with by the possible allegation of discrimination as well. As it turns out one of the worse things about this case is again Elia seemed completely unaware of the situation at hand until it was in the forefront of both the newspapers and the communities’ collective thoughts. This issue is still unresolved and looks to be a very long issue that will not be resolved shortly or with any easy solutions.

As the superintendent of one of the largest schools districts in the nation money is becoming a chief concern for Elia. Like the rest of the nation money is becoming hard to come by and has contributed greatly to some of the problems the school board has had to face over the past year. As recently as late October 2008 Elia herself has made pleas to the Florida State Board for additional funds to help with all the increased prices they are seeing from rising electricity bills to the cost of new books for students. But first she has to convince the board to stop cutting cost like the cut of 12.6 percent she recently saw firsthand her in Hillsborough County. Efficiency is the name of the game but it is hard to be efficient when even the things that you have are being taken away and the number of students increases every year. But out of all the challenges she is facing this is one that she will have the backing from the entire community as it is not due to anything she has any control over. But what the public does not realize is that this issue is a key factor in all the other issues facing the district. From the busing issues all the way to the lack of time and facilities for the disabled children in the schools.
In closing most of the concerns of the community stemming from the tenure of MaryEllen Elia revolve around a lack of communication. The busing issue revolves around parents not knowing where their kid’s bus stops are. When issues with the MealPay program came about no parents were aware of this issue either until after the kids came home and the schools had to make special accommodations to feed them. In fact Elia herself stated that this is a problem when she expressed the thought that they are always looking at ways to expand the lines of communication with parents so they can be better prepared for any changes that are ongoing. To this point in her tenure this is how she will be remembered, not as the effective leader everyone thought she was going to be, but as the leader of a school board that does not feel the need to communicate with the public. Se still has time to change this impression but will have to turn things around quickly and do it in a struggling economy where money will be hard to come by.