FORT MEYERS, Fla. – Leaders of Florida’s Lee County school district don’t play games when it comes to student learning.

Just last week, Gov. Rick Scott announced in a press release that 40 Lee County schools would receive a combined $3.5 million in state bonuses for having “sustained high student academic performance or substantial improvement in student performance in reading, mathematics, science, and writing since last year.”

Now comes word that district officials are planning staff shakeups at two schools that aren’t getting the job done academically.

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NBC-2.com reports that “up to 40 teachers won’t be back at Fort Meyers Middle Academy or Colonial Elementary next year (because) the schools are not performing as well as the district would like.”

Greg Adkins, assistant superintendent of operations for the district, said the decision was made after studying “student growth” data, which indicates how much learning (or “growth”) students achieved over the course of a school year, compared to the amount of learning they were expected to acquire.

To rectify the low-growth problem, district officials will hire some new teachers, add some new programs and approach the curriculum in a different manner, NBC-2.com reports.

Some of the 40 soon-to-be-replaced educators will be transferred to other Lee County schools, while others will not have their contract renewed – though that doesn’t mean they won’t be re-hired by the district.

“We hire about 700 teachers in this school district every single year, so I’m confident, if these folks go out and actively pursue, there’s opportunity out there,” Adkins told the news site.

It’s worth highlighting that Lee County’s proactive approach to improving two low-performing schools is possible only because its administrators can dismiss ineffective teachers and reassign others to school settings where their talents will be better utilized.

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In other words, Lee County leaders aren’t handcuffed by a bunch of union-imposed Thou Shalt Not work rules. Personnel decisions are made with the best interests of students in mind – period

That’s how it should be.

School leaders in troubled, teacher union-controlled school districts such as Philadelphia and Chicago can only dream of having such latitude over their staffs. If they did, it’s likely those districts wouldn’t be the academic black holes that they are.