Before deciding on school closings, Duval School Board to consider public's role in decision
Duval County School Board members plan to talk April 16 about how to involve the public in discussions on whether to close some schools over sagging enrollment and spiking construction expenses.
“We’ll look at a timeline and we’ll figure out exactly what those next steps are and how we want the community to be involved and how much we want the community to be involved,” board Chair Darryl Willie told an audience at a board meeting Tuesday night.
The school district hadn’t posted a formal notice of the discussion’s time and place by Wednesday, but the date for the follow-up workshop was included in an overview report Willie delivered to the crowd.
People lined up in the meeting to express alarm or support about potential closing scenarios that a consultant and school district administrators discussed with board members last month, but the chairman and Superintendent Dana Kriznar emphasized that the board hasn’t setled on any plans yet.
Plans for potential feeder patterns for 12 high schools identified dozens of schools that might be consolidated, but Willie said all of that needs more consideration before any action is taken.
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“This board has not had a chance to even really dive all the way into it,” he said. “And before we do any of that, we’re going to make sure we take it out to community feedback. And that’s what we’ll do on April 16.”
The closings were raised as a possibility in reaction to decreased use of many schools and unforeseen cost increases in a 15-year work plan for repairing or replacing district schools.
The work plan had been projected to total $1.9 billion when voters approved a half-penny sales tax in 2020 to cover part of the cost.
But after a series of the first building projects ended up being completed far over budget, administrators told the board in November the work plan could end up costing $3.9 billion and could create a $1.4 billion funding gap.
A string of people at Tuesday’s meeting worried about the future of Atlantic Beach Elementary School, a 1939-vintage institution in the small Beaches city that was suggested as a potential closing candidate despite holding an “A” grade from the state.
“To remove our only public school is going to harm our city,” argued former Atlantic Beach Mayor Ellen Glasser, who was followed soon after by the city’s current Mayor Curtis Ford.
Some speakers cheered the board weighing potential closings, saying the district had to protect its financial standing.
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“Thank you guys for considering hard decisions when it comes to facilities,” Ilya Soroka told the board, adding that he voted for the sales tax and “I trust you guys to make that decision” on whether closings are needed.
But critics challenged the motives behind that simple statement, posting on social media that Soroka was one of two speakers who held roles in an Arlington charter school. The school is about a mile from Parkwood Heights Elementary and three miles from Lone Star Elementary, both among the dozens of schools suggested as potential closing sites.
“Charter schools are salivating over the opportunity to take over our schools and pocket our tax dollars,” said a tweet from the account of Public School Defenders: Duval County, a group that advocates for traditional public schools.
The only school-closing decision made Tuesday was a previosuly-discussed step to consolidate R.V. Daniels Elementary, a gifted magnet school, at R.L. Brown Gifted and Talented Academy, but to delay that by a year, until August 2025.
Member Warren Jones told the board that students' families needed time to make preparations and that delaying the change would help keep "the trust and confidence of our constituents —– our customer."
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Duval School Board to decide public's role in school-closing choices
