The Issues We Are Working

Grading floors, special education, class size, building conditions, teacher pay and where the Lee County school budget actually goes. What we have established from the public record, and what we still cannot answer.

Issue briefs

Grading floors

The district says it sets no minimum grade. Teachers keep telling us they are instructed to enter one anyway. A parent cannot check a policy that officially does not exist, so we built a way for them to ask in writing.

60 — points between a zero and a passing grade, while every other letter band is 10 points wide (Source: School District of Lee County, Secondary Grade Reporting Handbook, p. 14)

• District communications told WGCU the claim that Lee has grade minimums is "categorically false… we have no minimums for grading."
• The district’s own unit-assessment guidance says grading "is a school-based decision" and recommends a modified scale, which is discretion a school can use without any district minimum existing.
• Both of those things can be true at once, and that is exactly why a parent needs the answer in writing rather than in a pickup line.

What we still need: We want to know which schools are applying a floor, to which assignments, and who told them to. If you teach in Lee County, that is the piece only you have.

Special education

Lee moved to a cluster model for a group of ESE students this school year, which changed which building a child attends and how far they ride to get there. Families found out close to the start of school.

216 — students moved under the ESE cluster model in August 2026 (Source: School District of Lee County)

• Moving a program moves a bus route with it. Parents have sent us route times that put an elementary-age child on a bus before 7 a.m. and off it close to 5 p.m.
• Florida’s disability scholarship went from 1,491 students to 140,147 statewide after eligibility was opened up, so the money and the students both move faster than a district staffing plan can follow.
• School psychologists and paraprofessionals are the staff who absorb that change, and they are the positions under pressure.

What we still need: We are collecting route times, IEP service minutes that changed without a meeting, and what families were actually told and when. Nothing you send is published with your name, your child’s name, or your school.

Class size and teacher load

The number of students in a room, and the number of preps a single teacher carries, is the complaint we hear most often and can document least. It is not published anywhere a parent can reach.

? — There is no public, school-by-school class-size number for Lee County that a parent can look up (Source: Parents for Transparency, as of August 2026)

• Class size is reported to the state in aggregate, at a level that averages away the room with 41 students in it.
• Teachers have described advanced courses run at sizes that make the coursework’s own requirements hard to deliver.
• A single teacher covering multiple different courses in one day is a workload question, and it is invisible in every number the district publishes.

What we still need: A photograph of a roster count, a schedule showing the number of preps, or a plain description of your period-by-period headcount. This is the issue where we are starting closest to zero.

Where the money goes

Most people assume a school district budget is mostly salaries. In Lee County, a little under half of what the district spends leaves the district entirely, to companies.

$708.4M — 43.3% of district spending went to vendors rather than payroll (Source: School District of Lee County Annual Financial Report, FY 2024-25)

• That share is a legitimate way to run a district. It is also the half of the budget that gets the least public attention, because payroll is what people picture.
• Whether those companies are in Southwest Florida is not something the public record answers. A billing address is not ownership.
• The board approves these contracts, and a large number of them are approved on the consent agenda in a single vote.

What we still need: We have asked the district for a breakdown of vendor spending by location. That request is outstanding.

Teacher pay and retention

Florida pays its experienced teachers less than any other state in the country. That is the context underneath every staffing conversation in Lee County, and it is not a Lee County decision.

50th — Florida’s rank among the states on average teacher salary, while ranking 19th on starting salary (Source: NEA Educator Pay Data, 2024-25)

• A competitive starting salary and the worst average salary in the country describe the same pay structure: a teacher who stays gets left behind.
• Florida also has the lowest in-state public university tuition in the nation, so the cost of entering the profession here is unusually low and the ceiling is unusually flat.
• Every vacancy is either a long-term substitute, a split class, or a teacher covering someone else’s planning period.

What we still need: If you left a Lee County classroom, we want to know what the actual deciding factor was. Pay is the easy answer and it is often not the real one.

Building conditions

Air conditioning, roofs, mold, plumbing, pests. The people who know the condition of a Lee County school building are the people who work in it, and reporting it up the chain is not the same as it being fixed.

89 — Lee County school buildings, and no public record of the condition of any of them that a parent can look up (Source: Parents for Transparency, as of August 2026)

• Filing an official work order is still the right first step and this never replaces it. It also leaves no public record.
• Photographs sent to us are re-encoded on your own device before they are uploaded, which strips the location data a phone puts inside a picture.
• Conditions only. We never publish an employee’s name, and anything about people, politics, or retaliation belongs in a story instead.

What we still need: What is broken, how long it has been broken, and whether students are in the room. That is the whole report.

Career and technical education

Lee County earns state money for every industry certification exam a student passes. Exam volume rose sharply in a single year. So did the number of students who sat an exam and did not pass.

1,548 — students who sat an industry certification exam and failed, up from 715 the year before (Source: School District of Lee County board workshop presentation, August 3, 2026)

• Earning per-exam certification money is legal, and every Florida district does it. The district says the revenue funds the program, and that is what the money is for.
• Opening exams to students who would never previously have been tested lowers a pass rate, and that can be exactly the right call.
• The fair question is not whether the district should earn the money. It is what the students who failed got out of sitting the exam, and what was planned for them afterward.

What we still need: We have not yet compared Lee’s pass-rate change against other Florida districts that pushed volume the same way. Until we do, this stays an open question rather than a finding.

Classroom supplies

Lee County teachers publish their own classroom wishlists and buy the rest themselves. This is the one issue on this page a stranger can close a piece of in about four minutes.

LIVE_WISHLIST_TOTAL — of classroom supplies on Lee County teachers’ own wishlists (Source: Parents for Transparency canvass of every published list)

• Every purchase ships straight to the teacher. Parents for Transparency never handles the money and takes no cut.
• The items requested most often across every list are ordinary consumables: paper, pencils, tissues, headphones, dry-erase markers.
• Local businesses offer a thank-you to anyone who shows a wishlist order confirmation, and listing is free and never an endorsement.

What we still need: If you teach in Lee County and your list is not here, add it. If your school’s teachers have no lists at all, tell us and we will ask them.