Commissioners question fairness of the program’s process.
Erin Hill
Gadsden County News Service
Parents and county officials are raising concern after learning that student applicants for the summer youth employment program applicants were chosen through a lottery system.
This year 291 students applied. Of those students, 150 were selected.
Although it was not on the agenda during the regularly scheduled meeting held on May 6, parents attended to voice their displeasure with the process.
In addition to submitting an application on time, students were required to have a letter of recommendation, write an essay, have 2.0 GPA, and be a resident of Gadsden County. The application also said applicants would be interviewed.
Commissioners and applicants were unaware that applicants would be randomly selected from a lottery.
Commissioner Ronterious Green asked Interim-County Administrator Roosevlet Morris to explain the process.
Green said the process was unfair to the applicants.
“I want to make sure these children’s essays were read, and that each of them had the opportunity to be interviewed,” Green said.
Morris asked Human Resources Director Jeronda Robinson to explain the process.
Robinson said they received 248 completed applications.
“That means they turned in everything on time,” Robinson said.
Robinson said she was instructed to pull 30 applicants from each district to make it fair.
“In order for us to make it fair, we used a lottery system, because if we were to interview, I still feel like we’re handpicking children, and we didn’t want to do that, so we ran it through the lottery,” Robinson said.
Morris said the applicants’ names were put in an app, and they were randomly selected.
“The app spit out those 30 names for each district,” Morris said.
Tomeka Lightfoot, a Gadsden County High School teacher, appeared before the board on behalf of her students and her daughter.
Lightfoot explained that she wrote more than 20 recommendation letters for students. Her daughter had to obtain a letter of recommendation from another educator so she could apply.
“We wanted to do it as fair as possible,” Lightfoot shared.
“I had prepped not only the children at Gadsden County High School, but I also prepped my own daughter,” Lightfoot said.
She said she teaches her students and her child they have to earn what they want.
“I had her sit at a table, and not AI-generate an essay; I made her write,” Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot told her daughter and students the interview process would reveal who genuinely did the work and wrote their essays, and who used artificial intelligence.
She said if there had been an interview process, she would have at least been able to justify that students who were chosen possibly performed better in the interview than those who were not.Interim attorney Louis Baptiste asked the board to table the matter so he could look into the legalities of the issue.
Morris noted that the human resources department would need the time to conduct interviews if the board chooses to go in that direction.
