List now down to 7; Yecke made the cut

We are now down to seven people in the running for the Florida Education Commissioner job. The next step will be interviews with the candidates in mid-September. 

•William Harner, deputy of the chief executive office, school district of Philadelphia

•Earl Lennard, adjunct professor, University of South Florida; former Hillsborough County schools superintendent

•Joseph Marinelli, superintendent, New York Supervisory District of Ontario, Seneca, Cayuga, Wayne and Yates counties; chief executive officer, Board of Cooperative Educational Services

•William Moloney, former Colorado commissioner of education

•Eric Smith, senior vice president for College Readiness, College Board in New York City; former superintendent, Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Annapolis, Md.

•James Warford, executive director, Florida Association of School Administrators, Tallahassee

•Cheri Pierson Yecke, chancellor of K-12 Public Schools, Florida Department of Education

For anyone just now joining us, please feel free to learn a little bit more about Cheri Yecke: here, here, here, here, and here. That should give you some idea as to why we here at Florida Citizens for Science aren’t excited about Yecke being on this list. There were a handful of stories about the list of candidates narrowing recently. Most of them focused on some late applications being rejected, but one story threw in a nice little tidbit when listing the seven remaining candidates:

Cheri Pierson Yecke, the current K-12 chancellor appointed by Bush. Her conservative views expressed as a political candidate in Minnesota have been rumored to be a hurdle to her appointment under the more moderate Crist.

We can only hope so.