Grumpy Old Teacher

Wednesday, I provided a report from the fifth community meeting the Duval County (FL) School Board held regarding proposed updates/revisions to the 2019 master facilities plan. The purpose of that post was to provide information about what the district was saying about why a major rewrite of the plan was needed. In this post, I offer my thoughts.

First, we should acknowledge at the outset that the school board is in a very difficult place. The problems are real and there is no solution available that has a reasonable chance of achieving consensus and satisfying everyone. It can be argued that they are in a hole they dug for themselves; nevertheless, they have to find a way out. Some sympathy is in order despite the mess of emotions many are experiencing because their school may close.

Second, the school board is taking blame for issues created by district staff. The tension between boards and superintendents when the superintendents withhold, downplay, or obscure important information goes back decades. For example, Ed Pratt-Dannals downplayed the reserves he was building up 15 years ago when he told the board that they needed to institute pay-to-play for varsity sports. The board was outraged to learn that there were reserves they could have considered using rather than suffer community pushback over the policy. But Pratt-Dannals told them he had put the available reserves in a report–they should have known that.

Over the past year, I have had the impression that things were slipping from under the fingertips of the interim superintendent and an aimless drift was becoming more pronounced. I asked the question: What do school board members know and when did district staff inform them?

To maintain perspective, we have to remember that Duval is not the only district grappling with this problem. Broward, Miami-Dade, and Hillsborough Counties, among others, are also looking at closing 30 to 40 schools due to enrollment losses causing operating fund shortages.

People are outraged that they were promised their school would be rebuilt in 2019 and now their school is slated to be closed. They have a right to be angry. But the issue is not rising construction costs as much as it is that Duval does not have the enrollment to operate all the schools it currently does. Falling enrollment means falling FTE dollars from the state. The money may follow the child, but the fixed costs of operating a school do not.

In other words, if Duval could find the money to rebuild a school on the closing list, it cannot afford to open the building.

Thus, the plea uttered by the interim superintendent, Dana Kriznar, for people to tell them what is special about their school. Left unspoken but meant, why should it be saved?

And the beauty pageant is underway. We can skip the swimsuit competition; what we want to hear is the contestants answering questions and demonstrating talent as to why they are a better choice for saving than the schools around them. We are now pitting the various Save Our School groups against one another.

It’s quite the trick if we fall for it.

It takes our attention off a real divide between parents, students, family members, and the community and the district school administration. The district wants to operate as few schools as possible without losing enrollment, but the community wants to keep their neighborhood schools.

Schools are more than institutions of learning; they are a pillar of their communities that provide stability in a world of rapid changes. They are a prism of neighborhood identity and pride. The question is not which school to consolidate into–it’s why consolidate at all? What will it take to keep our neighborhood centers open and can we structure the budget to support it?

DCPS has a top-down approach that is apparent to anyone who has ever worked in a school. I often call it the DCPS imperial attitude. I AM district staff; who are you to talk to me? Your ideas are not important. I AM the grand high poobah, all wise, all knowing, and all powerful. I will tell you what you will do and what you will say and what you will think.

It’s no surprise that one consistent complaint from the community is that they go to meetings and express their opinions, but it doesn’t seem to matter. In the end, the school system does what it intended to do when it first put out a plan for comment.

Darryl Willie, current Chair, says, “We’re not deaf.” But the board needs to realize that people don’t believe that. To regain the community’s trust, the board is going to need to revise their plans and show the community each change that was made and the source. The use of focus groups will not help if people cannot trace a path from their expressed feedback to plan changes.

What’s really going on has little to do with construction costs and the MFP. It’s about the future of this school district and its capacity to fulfill its mission to provide education to every child in every neighborhood to fulfill the state constitutional mandate to provide an adequate education for all children residing within its borders and the federal mandate to provide a free and appropriate education for every child.

Or is that supposed to end Panama? The sixth community feedback meeting was held last night at Paxon School for Advanced Studies (my last stop in my teaching career), District 5. Among the attendees were persons advocating for Fishweir Elementary, Young Women’s Leadership Academy/Young Men’s Leadership Academy (Butler Middle), Thomas Jefferson Elementary, Westside High, Raines High, and West Riverside Elementary. Maybe also some Stockton Elementary parents? I didn’t write them down so I may have left some out.

The meeting began with an overview of the process to come. Public input via an online link (go here) will end Friday; the last community meeting will be Thursday evening in District 1 at Terry Parker High School. Afterwards, summer focus groups will take the community feedback on the original draft and work on revisions. A representative from each school (probably someone from the School Advisory Committee,) community members chosen by board members, and other experts will be used to form the groups.

In the fall, district staff will take the work of the focus groups and use it to create a new iteration of a plan. They will bring a final recommendation to the school board, who expects to vote on it in November.

Dana Kriznar, interim superintendent, described what led to the district hiring a consultant to analyze the situation and recommend changes:

• Two-thirds of schools are under 85% of their capacity.
• 28 schools are under 50% of their capacity.
• 20 schools are under 300 students in their enrollment.
• Every school has fixed costs regardless of the enrollment (think electricity, maintenance, administration). Smaller schools have to use proportionately more of their base student funding (FTE) for these costs. That impacts class sizes and program offerings at the schools.
• Recent operational budgets have been using federal Covid money and reserves to make up shortfalls. Also, the district has cut positions and increased class sizes to remain in balance.
• Reserves have fallen to minimal levels required by the state. Covid funding ends in September. Also, declining enrollment brings less FTE funding from the state. (Implication: these past strategies are no longer effective. More drastic changes are needed. It’s more than a question of increasing construction costs for the Master Facilities Plan (MFP); the district cannot afford to operate all the schools it currently does.)

Thus, Dr. Kriznar continued, we hired a consultant to develop a proposal with these criteria:

• School boundaries
• Improve low utilization of facilities
• Sensible feeder patterns from elementary to middle to high school
• Maximize efficiency

Not considered in the plan:

• Special programs such as those for ESE students, career technical education
• School commuting patterns and general traffic patterns (for example, would a proposed change cause children to have to cross busy city highways)

With that lead-in, she asked the audience, “What makes your school special? That’s what we need to know.”

Kriznar also mentioned that the district is working to lower construction costs by looking at other types of school designs that are not as expensive, reducing the pace of construction because a one or two year rebuild involves higher labor costs for contractors, and moving more contracted services in-house for DCPS employees to provide.

She ended with a plea for everyone to help recapture enrollment by talking up the district and, in particular, their school.

A representative for the consultant then described the attributes they examined to create their proposed plan: identifying where students live, enrollment trends in neighborhoods, and the condition of the facilities.

Darryl Willie, this year’s chair, wrapped up this part, “We’re not deaf. Your comments are coming up in our workshops [as we talk about the plan.]”

Extra factoids gleaned from the Question and Answer time:

• They’re trying to find a balance between maximizing efficiency (least amount of operating costs) and providing the facilities and amenities desired.
• The benefit of a larger elementary school is that they have more resources and programming. Maintaining smaller schools means that resources have to be taken from the larger schools to subsidize the smaller schools.
• The optimal size of a school is not the same for all schools.
• The operating deficit for next year (24 – 25) is 41 million dollars.
• Capital dollars such as the half-penny sales tax cannot be used for operations.
• The time frame for when consolidation and closing of schools will take place and how it will happen has not been determined.
• New facilities already built are attracting enrollment back into the system.
• The school location into which others will be consolidated could change.

The above is an informative summary. I didn’t record anything from the public comment period. My hope is that those who didn’t go to a meeting get an idea of what the district said about the MFP and the why of what they want to do. Thus, I have refrained from opining about what was said. I’ll do that in a follow-up post.

A man, a plan, master facilities, Panama! Nope, the palindrome isn’t quite there yet and neither is the MFP revision, which is a complete rethinking of the district and how it structures itself.

The deadline to qualify has passed. Unless a candidate is tagged as qualified, they will not appear on the August ballot. This means that the Districts 1, 3, & 7 races will be decided in August. It would be better if Florida law deferred two candidate non-partisan races to the November ballot as there would be a higher voter turnout, but that would take a change in law that’s not going to happen in the time for this year’s elections if any legislator would care to introduce a bill.

Let’s take a quick look.

District 1:

• Nadine Ebri: Featuring an endorsement from Diana Greene, ex-superintendent, Ms. Ebri has experience as a former DCPS teacher. Her website tells us that she was a finalist for Teacher of the Year in 2020-2021 and that she launched the Minecraft Lab, which is a software product from Microsoft marketed to teachers as a means of providing engaging learning experiences to students. She currently is “Education Community Manager for a large educational technology company.”
• Tony Ricardo: A former public (Andrew Jackson High) and private (New Covenant Christian Assembly) teacher, his website is sparse. His landing page features a donation ask and his info page gives a general overview short on specifics. He does have the endorsement of the police union and the Duval County Republican Assembly as well as a group calling themselves Stand4Jax.

District 3:

• Rebecca Nathanson: She became a parental rights advocate in 2021 after watching the DCPS School Board deal with Covid policy, specifically “the school board violated all three branches of government when they mandated that students wear cloth masks when they returned to school.” She goes on to make it clear that she’s the anti-board board candidate because the current crowd considers themselves above the law. Her actual experience is volunteering as a tutor for English Language Learners, but she also considers herself an expert in developing curriculum.
• Cindy Pearson: Currently the incumbent, she is running for a second term. There’s not a lot of information on her campaign website, but this may be the one race that serves as a referendum on school board performance across these last few contentious years. But only District 3 gets to vote.

District 5:

• Reggie Blount: A product of DCPS schools (Paxon Sr. High,) he holds a bachelor’s degree from Edward Waters University and a master’s degree from Liberty University. He has had an extensive military career and volunteered in the community “Parents are the foundation …” “I’m focused on what’s healthy for children.” He also supports the inclusion of arts, music, and sports as an essential part of a child’s education.
• Nahshon Nicks: A previous candidate for City Council (District 7, 2019; At-Large Region 5, 2023,) he’s now running for school board. He’s a self-described pastor (Fresh Word Ministries) and future MMA fighter who was/will be featured in the movie, Fight Church. He’s “not the establishment candidate, but I’m the candidate who will fight for our children & our great teachers for a better tomorrow.”
• Hank Rogers: “Serving children is what I have always done with integrity, knowledge and passion!” He ran for the position in 2016, but lost to the incumbent who is term-limited and cannot run again. Lots of public service on his resume, he has also been a substitute teacher in the past as well as serving as a Guardian Ad Litem for children in the foster care system.

District 7:

• Melody Bolduc: Ran for the position in 2016, she is back to succeed the incumbent who is term-limited and cannot run again. “Mother, Teacher, Conservative, Small Business Owner” are the features on the header of her website. She majored in teacher education at UNF and began teaching at Wolfson High. She went to parochial schools after completing her elementary education at Beauclerc. Among her community engagement citations, she lists membership in the Republican Women’s Club and Moms for Liberty.
• Sarah Mannion: A latecomer to the race, she took over for a previous candidate who was forced to withdraw from the race. She is a Jacksonville native and local attorney who attended DCPS schools on the Southside.

I will take a deeper dive in the weeks ahead. I had hoped to glean answers to important questions and issues from the candidate’s published materials rather than sending their campaigns questionnaires, but it doesn’t look like they have enough on the web to avoid that. My task ahead, then, is to work on what to ask them. Feel free, encouraged, solicited, &c. &c. to make suggestions in the comments.

I have no idea why the new superintendent’s contract has this staple from the 60s playing in my head, but earworms are for sharing.

Here it is:

• $320,000 annual salary
• Use of a district car (personal use forbidden) or reimbursement of expenses
• Reimbursement of reasonable business expenses
• District cell phone
• Health insurance benefits that are available to other ‘managerial’ employees
• Life insurance premium not to exceed $2500 to maintain the existing $750,000 policy he already has
• No FRS contribution. (He’s not eligible.) 8.62% contribution to voluntary account, which is $27,584 per year. The amount will be recalculated in succeeding years.
• Holidays will be same as other 12 month employees
• Vacation leave at 2 days per month not to exceed 62 days.
• Sick leave at 1 day per month
• $15,000 in moving expenses or actual amount, whichever is less as documented by receipts.
• Professional development: appropriate memberships will be paid, expenses and travel up to 25 days a year as approved by the Board Chair.
• Annual evaluation.
• Legal expenses will be covered if related to employment unless they result from gross negligence or willful misconduct
• Board may unilaterally terminate employment. In that case, 20 weeks of pay if superintendent signs a legal release of liability, plus payout of accrued sick leave and up to 60 days of vacation leave

Contract to run from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2028.

However, unless this guy is good, really, really good, I don’t think he’ll make it past two years. IJS …

The heat and the humidity of a Florida summer have caught up with us for 2024. Hard at work, it is doing its job at weakening the glue that holds a decorative surface to the coarser material that lies underneath. That’s usually not pretty as there is a reason someone went to the bother of covering it up.

Something of the same seems to be happening to Duval County’s latest superintendent choice, Dr. Christopher Bernier, whose resume includes stints in Lee County, FL and Clark County, NV.

I’m not going to summarize the saga that underlies the whistleblower complaint that has come to light in recent days. If you are reading this post, it is 99% certain that you already know. Every day, every hour brings a new revelation including an email to the DCPS School Board in late April.

It’s hard to judge in these circumstances because there is much we don’t know, the investigation is ongoing, there is a chance the complaint is unwarranted (doubtful, but still a chance,) and DCPS board members reported during the decision meeting that they had spoken to persons in Lee County, although they said nothing about a complaint and investigation.

Even so, the caution many in our community are urging upon the School Board is merited and should be heeded, specifically, to slow down or suspend the contract negotiations until Lee County completes its investigation and the results are known.

This controversy reminds me of another Duval County superintendent from 20 years ago, Joseph (Joey) Wise. Fun fact: he was the last non-Florida superintendent hired by the Board. Wise, a product of DCPS schools, returned to helm the district from the Christina (Wilmington,) Delaware school district.

He lasted 20 months. At the time of his hiring, there was great optimism. Indeed, the Board at that time was so wowed by his interview that they stopped their process and hired him on the spot.

If only they had waited to do the vetting. Among his Delaware sins, he was known for having people followed throughout the day to see what they were doing and where they were going. Even worse, he was, shall we say, loose with his bookkeeping practices. The district faced a shortfall in its reserves when he left and had to consider tax increases to recover.

He brought his shady budget practices to Jacksonville. The late Tommy Hazouri, then serving on the school board, kept a watchful eye on the finances and would question Wise about the district’s reports.

Worse, Wise began feuding with some of the Board members, in particular, Brenda Priestly-Jackson. He had her residence investigated and complained that she did not reside in the school district she represented. Worse, he wrote an open letter to her that he sent to the Florida Times-Union, in which he accused Ms. Jackson of not doing what’s best for children and demanded she resign.

Needless to say, he was swiftly terminated. Unfortunately, the Board did not negotiate a termination clause in his contract, for cause or without cause, and it cost the district $275,000 to buy him out. At the time, Tommy Hazouri uttered the classic sentence, “We made a mistake when we hired him, we won’t make a mistake when we fire him, and I hope that’s now.”

Is history repeating itself with Dr. Bernier?

The School Board chose Dr. Bernier. No need for a spoiler alert, the news is all over the city of Jacksonville and dominating everyone’s attention, including the media, such that a school bus getting rear-ended while it performed its safety stop at the railroad tracks has not appeared as a news story like it normally would.

Unfortunately for those who were passionately against him, there will be no Oscars moment where whoopsie, wrong envelope is corrected and the other guy wins.

I lead off with those paragraphs because one of the themes of this morning’s school board meeting is that we are a divided community over this decision. Both men possessed the qualifications needed for hiring and experience that would serve them well in undertaking the superintendency of the nation’s 20th largest school district. Whoever would be chosen (it had not been determined yet) must receive the support of all to be a success.

• Cindy Pearson (District 3), “Open minds and hearts, please.”
• Kelly Coker (District 1), “The politics have to step aside for the good of the children.”
• April Carney (District 2), “Two wonderfully qualified candidates.”
• Lori Hershey (District 7), “I’m asking the community to support the selection.”

Board members were at pains to explain the work they put into making their selection, describing phone calls made to Lee and Loudon Counties where they talked to board members, officials, and members of the communities as they attempted to discern who could best take hold of the district and grapple with a plethora of issues. They discussed the differences between their experience in regards to economically-disadvantaged families and English Language Learners.

Another theme was the Florida educational landscape and the specific knowledge needed to navigate it. This seemed to be what tipped several board members to Bernier.

• Kelly Coker was particularly complimentary towards Daniel Smith, describing him as a “visionary, incredibly bright, and a collaborative leader.” However, she noted that he doesn’t know Florida and the district does not have the time to build up a visionary in the role.
• Warren Jones (District 5) thought that “Smith would be better to move us academically,” noting that he had “rebuilt trust and confidence with the Loudon community” after the indictment of its superintendent. He expressed concern with Bernier’s “Tallahassee relationships.” But, in the end, he believed Bernier has a better grasp on the many areas of concern.
• Cindy Pearson posed the question, “What is best for students, staff, and families? Who is the best for now?” She thought Bernier would have more of an immediate impact versus focusing on targets five years away.
• April Carney too had the difference of Florida schools and Virginia schools on her mind. But she also had the culture wars in mind and expressed reservations that Loudon County was ignoring the direction of Virginia’s governor and was implementing Title IX interpretations of the USDOE that would safeguard the rights of LGBTQ students. She specifically mentioned a concern about “student safety in the bathrooms.”

By my tally, six of the nine public comment speakers expressed a view that could be described as transphobic or anti-DEI. Some were more obvious about it than others. Almost all of the nine speakers mentioned student safety, but not in a way we normally think: bullying, fights, social media harassment. Carney reflected those views.

In the end, the vote was 7 – 0. Chairman Willie wanted Daniel Smith, but saw that he would be outvoted and felt that a unified, recorded vote would be better.

As we proceed to the final stages of the superintendent search in Duval County, Florida, we come down to those tense moments when the two finalists have done in-person interviews and board members have to make a decision. They had already folded in the fall and opted to restart in January, but they don’t have that option now. A choice must be made.

Thursday, May 23 the call will be made. School Board members have to lay their cards on the table and decide. The meeting begins at 9 AM.

There are two candidates left. Of the two, one has recently resigned from Lee County, FL because they are changing to an elected superintendent and he preferred to be an appointed superintendent. The other is Chief of Schools for Loudon County, VA who acted as temporary superintendent for a year.

The latter, Daniel Smith, said that he was asked to apply to be the permanent superintendent, but he declined as he was focused on his work at hand and didn’t want to be distracted by the extra workload of prepping for a hiring process.

Of the two, I found Christopher Bernier to make the better impression. In his semi-finalist submission, it seemed he talked in general, vague terms, using jargon in place of actually saying something, but that was not true of his interview. Many of the questions were based upon current problems in the district, but did not telegraph that connection.

Bernier used opportunities to speak directly to the issues. He had read news reports, researched facts, and was ready. One issue particularly stood out in his responses to both the focus group and the board: the master facilities plan that proposed closing many schools and re-organizing neighborhood zones into feeder patterns.

Bernier said that the community uproar was caused by the fact that the superintendent’s plan from consultants came as a surprise. It was dropped upon everyone, including the board, without warning. He called that an error and said that, before developing a plan, the district has to go to the community, describe the issue, and solicit input that would be used to develop a plan. As ideas come in, incorporate them into the process. In the end, not everyone will get what they want, but they need to believe that their input was valued in the process.

On ethical issues, he emphasized the need to maintain integrity because once that is sacrificed, the person is done. He framed it as “how do you behave when no one is watching.”

He talked about “listening to learn.” People join an organization for “impact and purpose.” His biggest issues he worked on in Lee County were communication, compensation, human resources, and transportation. He talked about how they discovered the high cost of providing transportation for choice schools.

Communication is key. “I discovered that when I got sick of talking about something, people were just beginning to hear me. I had to keep repeating myself.”

Also, data is important to improve processes. He had standing meetings with all his key leaders every two weeks.

Building relationships with people is also key. “Trust is a bank deposit. You have to make many deposits before you make a withdrawal.” He said he immediately reached out to key people when he first arrived in Lee County, including local and state politicians. Having these in place was a huge help in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and he was dealing with $350 million in property damage, restarting operations while using grace and compassion in working with impacted employees.

He would meet with teachers and other staff groups to focus on their needs. He finds that teacher issues (beside compensation) involve discipline and school culture. However, he also said that the district’s job is to teach teachers the right thing to do and that the district must monitor, walk through classrooms, and have chats with teachers, but he tried to make clear that such chats would not be gotcha in nature, but supportive and collaborative.

He talked about finding operation efficiencies in the budget and working with employee groups, but admitted that Lee had not contracted out basic services like Duval had and that meant reviewing the contract language before anything else could be done.

Daniel Smith offered similar approaches, but he didn’t seem as knowledgeable about Duval, a slight surprise because his semifinalist submission seemed to indicate otherwise. For example, he talked about using communications systems to inform parents about absences. Duval already does that. He called it nudging and it’s efficacy is based on research, but again, Duval already does that. In a red flag for me, he said that parents want to hear from teachers when their child is absent. (One more thing to do!)

He talked about the advisory groups he formed when he was the acting superintendent: teachers, principals, and students. His biggest issue was rebuilding trust when the board dismissed the superintendent for retaliating against an employee.

Leadership involves humility; good leaders should admit mistakes. (Bernier said something similar.) Good leaders surround themselves with a good team.

When it comes to controversial issues, he said it was important for the district to get people to understand the why for the decisions being made.

He didn’t have much to say about the rebuilding plan. It was something he would have to familiarize himself with if he gets the job. Many of his answers seemed to say the same thing.

He said it was important for district leadership, especially the superintendent, to be in schools and classrooms to know what is really going on.

He also talked about the need for a superintendent to have working relationships with legislators. In one of the funniest lines of the day and he had no idea that it was, he talked about a pending law in Virginia that would have caused great difficulty for schools to implement the mandate. He was successful in getting a change to provide flexibility for districts because he got the legislature to change a word in the bill–from shall to may.

The above is from my notes taken at the community focus group interviews. The 1 PM interview of Smith overlapped with the board interview of Bernier. I elected to stay with the focus group for consistency as I had attended their morning interview of Bernier.

When the focus group was done, I moved to the board interviews. The questions were the same with different phrasing for the most part and the answers were the same. It was a surprise, then, to see Smith stumped at a couple times when all he had to do was repeat his answer to the focus group.

But Smith seemed more nervous with the board. Bernier was more like I’m an equal among equals; Smith seemed more like a subordinate being grilled by his bosses. To make sure I was not being unfair, I watched the recording of the Bernier interview with the Board Tuesday afternoon.

Many of those chosen for the community focus group were insiders: both Carolyn Davises, Lawrence Dennis, Trey Csar, Rachel Tutwiler among others. What was interesting was that some people introduced themselves as representing District 1, 3, 5, or 7; no one did that for District 2, 4, or 6.

Another person who came for the interviews was former superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals (2007-2012). He attended both Bernier interviews, but skipped the Smith interviews. Does that mean we can infer who the insiders (once known as the Duval Mafia) are pulling for?

My last impression is audience size. Half the seats were filled in the morning, many of them local media. I overheard some of them discussing how they would cover both 1 PM interviews, but the focus group room was mostly empty at that time. I figured they were in the other room, but when I got there, it was almost empty. Did they bail? (Not all of them. I could tell from her lanyard that the WJXT reporter had stayed.)

Raise, fold, or call. My conclusion is that either man brings essentially the same skill set–not much difference between them; however, Bernier holds an edge as far as knowing the Florida landscape and putting more effort into his performance, including a Saturday tour of school campuses across the city. He couldn’t go into the buildings, but he could pull into the parking lot to get an impression of the state of the facilities and the layout and how that impacts school operations.

Thursday, May 23, 9 AM, Cline Auditorium, 1701 Prudential Drive. That is when the School Board will meet and make their choice.

I spent all day at the Schultz Center, whose history is too long to recount here but has a connection to the local school board in Duval County, Florida. The Schultz has the capacity to host large scale meetings that the school system lacks in other facilities unless it rents hotel space or attempts to hold a community meeting in a high school in the midst of a school day.

After attending interviews conducted by the Community Focus Group and the School Board, I have a good sense of the two finalists and will share my thoughts later. I am honoring the School Board’s request that no one publish before Wednesday so neither candidate learns about what the other said and gains an edge.

Mind you, they cannot legally embargo reporting anymore than they can close the meetings to the media and public. Florida’s Sunshine Laws still have some punch left in them. But they asked politely, so I will do as they asked.

There was a community meet-and-greet in the evening. I was tempted to skip it and went home. I live about 20 miles from the city center, about as far as one can go west in Duval County and still be in Duval County. But then I realized that there were two questions I wish had been asked and weren’t. I went back to ask them.

The set-up was not conducive for me to get in front of each candidate and ask my questions. I’m asking them here in hopes that one or more school board members might see this post and add the questions to their list that they will ask when they meet individually with each candidate tomorrow, that is, Tuesday. With this long explanation out of the way, let’s get to it.

1. DCPS has adopted online curriculums for its academic classes in the last few years. That translates into screen time in the classroom. How much screen time is optimal for students and what is the maximum screen time that students should not exceed in a school day? Please differentiate your answer by age as you see fit.

Nothing is sadder than to walk around a school several times a day looking through classroom windows to see that the students are working individually on mandated programs. Research varies on how much screen time is too much, but increasing anxiety and behavior issues among students suggest that the district is exceeding the limit.

Online programs saved many a teacher during the pandemic as a means of managing an otherwise impossible workload. But we have emerged from the pandemic. The problem is that online curriculums are very efficient at harnessing Skinnerism, the belief that human behavior and learning can be controlled and channeled through applying a system of rewards and punishments. But the theory runs into difficulty because humans are very clever and begin to rebel once they come to believe that they are being manipulated.

During my childhood (1960s) my sisters and I were under a television restriction. We could watch no more than one hour of television on school days and no more than two hours on weekend days. That is why I grew up never having watched Saturday morning cartoons. A boy had to carefully allocate those hours and I wanted them available for the evening. I don’t know if my Mom was ahead of her time or simply didn’t want her children lying around the house all day watching TV. Either way, we got the best kick-in-the-pants: go outside and play with our peers.

2. Vygotsky and Piaget, among others, pioneered theories of child development in the 20th century. How should these theories inform the ways we teach children and design curriculums?

School must be more than using children to produce reading and math scores on standardized tests. The state environment in Florida, with its punitive measures for teachers, schools, and districts, offers a great temptation to collapse the curriculum to focus on what the state tests require and then use that to grade all of the above.

School has to be more, much more than even providing a course of instruction that addresses the whole child with classes in art, music, physical education, and beyond.

We have to recognize that these young humans are indeed fully human at whatever stage of life they are living. They are not a work-in-progress that won’t be ready until they reach adulthood. They are living their lives now! But at the development stage appropriate for their age.

It is the job of schools, whatever type, to provide the environment in which children will thrive and develop as they should. As a freshman teacher, I greeted each new class by encouraging them not to miss out on all that high school offers. Beyond the academics, they should make time to find their posse, the group of friends they will ride with for the next four years, they should go to the dances, they should find after-school activities for their interests … the four years go by so fast, they need to experience it all.

All of it, including the heartbreak of broken romance, is a part of the human experience and crucial for them as they grow. How do we make sure that our schools are providing a safe place for them as they do so?

Duval County Public Schools has named its two finalists for the Superintendent’s position: Christopher Bernier (Lee County, FL former superintendent who resigned unexpectedly in April–one board member had this to say: Debbie Jordan expressed disappointment that the separation agreement had to be negotiated in two days and without public discussion. “I know we cannot explain what has transpired,” Jordan said. “It’s just hard for me to understand why there is not any kind of conversation on this.”)

Indeed, a mystery surrounds his departure as reported here. But hey, he wants to come to Duval County and let’s make him a finalist without bothering to do the most basic Google search on his name.

At this point, with the way this process has been going, I want to throw shade on the Florida School Boards Association, who is driving the process. If you’ve been watching the meetings, the Duval School Board has pretty much done whatever they said.

The other finalist is Daniel Smith (Loudon County, VA current chief of schools.) He was acting superintendent for a period of time after the Loudon County School Board fired its superintendent for retaliating against an employee. That’s no reflection upon Dr. Smith, of course, but it contributes to the miasma that has hung over the DCPS superintendent search from the beginning.

How did it come to this?

At today’s school board meeting, the members and the FSBA representatives talked about how they have two outstanding finalists to consider. I’m not sure how many would agree. Local journalist Nate Monroe had this to say in a recent Florida Times-Union column:

To be superintendent of a Florida school district today is to manage decline and to do so while standing mute — because outspokenness is off limits in the Free State of Florida. Vindictive state officials, vindictive school board members, vindictive right-wing activists who want to ban books and micromanage the curriculum: they are ghouls, all, that a superintendent must wrestle with.

Florida Politics reporter A.G. Gancarski offered this in a recent opinion piece for Jax Today, a local online publication from WJCT, the local NPR station:

And what’s clear based on the superintendent search thus far is that any candidate who comes in will do so with slight experience, possibly none, in a major district like Duval, with competing forces that include a very activist state commissioner of education.

As both journalists note, a dystopian future of decline hangs over the school district. It cannot get on top of teacher misconduct scandals, its grand rebuilding plan is collapsing, and declining enrollment is going to force the closure of many schools, a fraught process that upsets the community and drives a heated and divisive political process of us vs. them.

If you watched today’s school board meeting that determined the two finalists, you might have observed the lack of enthusiasm about the process. There was a lack of energy on the dais. But at the end, they congratulated themselves on finding these candidates much as King Charles has recently been handing out military honors to his family members who have not earned them.

Is the Duval County School Board as clueless as Britain’s Royal Family, who seem determined not to notice the visible decline?

How has it come to this?

We need answers, not the argle-bargle of spitballing a word salad full of jargon. The FSBA is going to work on questions for each board member to ask next week when the two candidates arrive for interviews. Each member will take an area of focus:

• Charlotte Joyce: Fiscal responsibility and transparency. The other members chuckled with one commenting that they knew this would be her area of focus.
• April Carney: Culture and climate. Oh dear God, why? Sorry, I didn’t mean to inject my bias into this piece.
• Kelly Coker: Highly Effective Educators and Staff. They had to ask her to repeat it, she was one of the worst in not talking into the mike. I’m beginning to wonder if her failure to file for re-election means her heart is no longer in the work and she’s not going to.
• Warren Jones: Duuuuvalll! In other words, he’s going to be the point man in forcing the candidates to address the situation in Duval as opposed to offering palaver about argle-bargle.
• Cindy Pearson: High Quality Partnerships. Yeah, I don’t get it, either.
• Lori Hershey: I really wanted Duuvall! But since it’s taken, Personal Leadership.
• Daryl Willey: Thats leaves me Instructional Leadership and Student Supports.

You can watch the entire meeting here. It ran a little more than an hour. Pro tip: turn on the Closed Captioning. I’ve been kvetching all afternoon about the sound quality but the district has yet to respond.

Dates to keep in mind:

• Monday, May 13, 6 PM – 8 PM. Community Meet and Greet. You get the chance to shake a hand and maybe get an answer to a quick question if the crowds are low. Otherwise, the FSBA is gonna keep the line moving, perhaps toward the “Egress” if you’re up-to-date on your P.T. Barnum.
• Monday, May 13, afternoon. Interviews will take place. I believe this will be at the Schultz Center but I may be mistaken. Full board interviews will take place at 1 PM and as these will constitute a public meeting, anyone interested should be able to attend.
• Monday, May 13, mid-morning. A community focus group will interview the candidates. As best as I can schuss this out, they don’t fall under the Sunshine Law and the public will not be allowed to attend. I will correct this if in error. The focus group meeting has been publicly noticed so it’s likely that members of the public will be able to attend.
• Monday, May 13, morning. The candidates will tour a few schools in Riverside. Yes, I know, I live in Baldwin.
• Thursday, May 23. The school board meets to pick someone. Or maybe not, who knows how things will turn out?

The fillies run today in the Kentucky Oaks, which can be more fun than Saturday when the boys do the Derby. But here in Jacksonville, outside the one scratch (Luis Solano, reasons unknown,) the remaining five semi-finalists have submitted their qualifying materials in hopes of being asked to the race next week.

You will find the materials posted here on the district’s website. There’s a link for community feedback and I encourage you to use it after reading and viewing the responses. It will take an hour and a half of your time; if you care about the district and the leader it will hire, it is worth it.

Do both. In my review last night, I found that some candidates did not come across well in their written answers, but communicated well in their videos and vice versa. Also, not all candidates were well-versed in the local issues, but there were a few who were and had ideas. I have to admit they would have an edge with me if I was a sitting board member.

I won’t offer individual critiques of the submissions, but rather offer a handicapping guide:

• The candidates who spoke to the issues of teacher misconduct, enrollment decline, and the proposed plan to consolidate schools get a plus. Give an extra plus to the ones who cited the actual statistics. They are paying attention.
• The candidates who offered general palaver in response to the questions that were full of buzzwords, jargon, and more get a minus. Back in the day, we called it slinging the <ahem>.
• Those who wanted to restart the master facilities planning get a minus. We’ve been planning for the last three decades. That’s a Jacksonville hallmark of local governance. We ought to trademark it and make a little cash off licensing fees. We don’t need to reassess and start from scratch. We know the situation. How the <ahem> do we get out of it? At this point, I don’t think the voters will extend the half-penny sales tax when it expires.
• Those whose answers on budgeting followed the Florida timeline get a nod. The candidate who didn’t and said a final budget for board adoption would be done by mid-March gets mocking laughter. The Florida legislature has not passed a new budget by that date unless we’re in an election year.
• Be alert for those who recognize the dynamics of the demographics. The school-age population of the city does not match the profile of the overall population. One spoke to this with suppressed passion in his voice. A longshot, but in the Derby anything can happen. This is especially true when you watch the videos. After the first two, I thought I might title this article “Bald White Guys with Beards + One Woman,” but the next person stopped that thought.
• Those who didn’t squeeze out an ‘all stakeholders,’ but instead recognized the crucial role of involving students in policy decisions get a plus. Two plusses if they were talking about discipline issues.
• Three candidates have a connection to Northern Virginia school districts. In other words, blue country. There’s no way to figure out how this affects our handicapping, but will it factor into the future once Ronny D. has finished making up with Trump and looks in his rearview mirror only to see Glenn Youngkin closing the gap? A superintendent, ostensibly hired by a nonpartisan school board, is nevertheless enmeshed in Florida politics by the very nature of the state educational enviroment.

Everyone will have their own opinion, but for my money (including the half-penny sales tax and extra property tax mil,) I would invite these three for interviews next week: Daniel Smith, Adam Taylor, and Josiah Phillips.

In the meantime, mix yourself a mint julep (bourbon, sugar, and a sprig of mint) and enjoy the race.