Nate Monroe: Mad about Duval's school closure plan? Blame school-choice zealots

COMMENTARY | A confluence of pressures have cracked the moonshot effort to rebuild and right-size the Duval County public school system: Construction costs have skyrocketed, blowing budgets for new school rebuilds and rehabs of current ones; the proliferation of charter schools has eaten into the district's enrollment and siphoned away tens of millions in sales tax revenue that would otherwise be used to improve neighborhood public schools; new and increasingly radical proposals in Tallahassee threaten annually the future of Florida's school districts; and amid it all Duval County has no permanent superintendent — no empowered leader to manage the storm.

The district is in crisis.

Why else would Duval schools leaders even propose a plan to consolidate even more schools than they'd anticipated years ago, including deeply rooted neighborhood schools like Westside High and Atlantic Beach Elementary? That proposal, reported by the Times-Union this week, sent shockwaves through Jacksonville neighborhoods and had local elected officials scrambling to reassure their constituents that their prized local schools wouldn't get the ax. "Atlantic Beach Elementary is not closing," said Jacksonville City Council member Rory Diamond, who represents the Beaches but has no direct say in such plans.

Diamond pinned the blame on the district's alleged mismanagement of the half-cent sales tax voters approved in 2020 to upgrade Jacksonville's public school buildings, which are among the oldest in Florida. But in truth there is a toxic cocktail of factors at work that are not just complicating the now-$3.9 billion rebuilding-and-consolidation plan but that are also clouding the future of public education in Jacksonville and in Florida.

Consider: Since the district began collecting the voter-approved half-cent sales tax in January 2021, the district has, by virtue of state law, been forced to distribute $62 million in proceeds to the county's various charter schools, or nearly 17 percent of the $363 million the tax has generated over the past three years, according to data the district provided. And unlike the district, which campaigned for the tax by dedicating its use to improving the physical conditions of its schools, charters are not required to spend their money on capital projects or school improvements. They're not even required to report to the district how they're spending the money. But district figures show, among the charters that do report, that far and away the largest use of the tax revenue by charters is rent payments — a clear boon for landlords and charter management companies. Less clear is how students benefit.

Pro-choice evangelists like Diamond have trolled the district for years to prepare for lower enrollment as the number of charters grow and parents, using a universal voucher system, send their children to private schools in increasing numbers.

Well, this — that is, the closure of more public schools than anyone had anticipated just a few years ago, including beloved but small schools like Atlantic Beach Elementary — is what that looks like. This, in other words, is the future in a pro-choice state: an ever-shrinking public school system supplemented by a patchwork of charters whose quality and services — like whether they provide busing — vary widely and private schools that operate outside the bounds of almost any regulations or public accountability.

Schools like Westside High and Atlantic Beach Elementary are neighborhood institutions, and that's why even talking about their closure so deeply offends the senses. There is permanence to a decision like that, a feeling of having lost something irretrievable and irreplaceable. Certainly no charter or private school will fill that void, a fact acknowledged by the freak-out among the Beaches elected officials rallying to save Atlantic Beach Elementary. But by cold, hard data alone — upon which the updated analysis of the rebuilding plan was based — closing that school makes sense. And if it doesn't happen there, it will have to happen in some other neighborhood with less political clout.

The dog caught the car: School choice, just not in my neighborhood.

This is also the first year, a district spokesperson told me, that Duval Schools began sharing a portion of its property-tax revenue dedicated to capital expenses with charter schools, "another unexpected hit to our facility plan revenue."

The fiscal hawks are perched and ready to strike the moment the district errs; where are they on the more opaque charters? Where is the outrage the charter share of the tax revenue isn't being spent on actually upgrading school facilities?

Is it any great shock Duval County is having trouble finding a new superintendent? The story of the Ron DeSantis era is about the liquidation of public education from kindergarten through college, a kind of gradual privatization Florida began decades ago but is finally culminating. The enormous tax revenue that props up the system can be turned into subsidies for real estate deals (charters), stimulus payments for the well-to-do (universal vouchers), or patronage jobs for political allies (higher education). Non-compliant school leaders can be threatened with prosecution. And now, every school board race in every district in Florida is a high-stakes affair that could lead to a Moms for Liberty loon micromanaging and casting aspersions upon the superintendent.

The hardest-hit by this will, as ever, be the least politically powerful — residents who will continue to rely on a shriveled, cannibalized public school district to educate their children. "Choice" is no choice at all if the nearest charter isn't on a bus route or happens to be run by ideological zealots.

A common refrain one hears in these debates is that our taxes don't fund systems but students. "Funding should follow the student, not the bloated bureaucracy. What’s wrong with parental choice?," Diamond, the pro-choice council member, once told a member of the Duval County School Board.

Yet we fund systems all the time: a robust system of public safety, for example, that includes police and fire protection. Should we instead dole out grants for each resident to hire their own private security guard if they wish to opt out? Like the school system, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is also a large government bureaucracy prone to mismanagement and trouble (like the arrest last week of a JSO officer accused of sex crimes with a 17-year-old girl). Do those problems call into question our government system of public safety or highlight the need to inject competition into that space? If not, then why is public education any different?

Under fire, the Duval County School Board and administration may, for now, shelve any talk of the dramatic school closures outlined in its latest report. But that draconian vision isn't merely some consultant's fever dream. It's an unsettling look at a future that, without dramatic change, is all but inevitable — if it's not already here.

Nate Monroe is a metro columnist whose work regularly appears every Thursday and Sunday. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Charters, universal vouchers drive Jacksonville school-closure plan