Duval County Public Schools is facing a 62-million-dollar shortfall and the superintendent’s solutions all seem to involve either cutting teachers and staff or making teachers jobs harder. She even disagreed with the one suggestion, cutting magnet school transportation, that would require parents to sacrifice. Well I don’t understand why only teachers and staff should sacrifice while parents and the community get a pass.
I like the superintendent, but she has it all wrong on this one.
I urge the superintendent and the school board to let the citizens and parents of Jacksonville know that before one teacher loses their job, before we assign one class to have more than forty students, or before we get rid of any art, music or physical education classes we will get rid of all extracurricular sports including football and end magnet school transportation.
The super and board should tell parents and the community that if they don’t like that, then they have another option and that is demand the governor call a special legislative session to properly fund education and tell them if he doesn’t and they don’t, then in November they will hold the governor and the legislature accountable.
The republican members of the Duval Delegation, representatives Byrd, Yarborough, Fant and Fischer along with senator Bean voted to give DCPS an extra forty-seven cents per student or around sixty thousand dollars. That is not just laughable but insulting and dangerous as well. If they won’t do right by our children and public schools, we need to replace them with legislators that will.
Duval’s graduation rate goes up and they underfund education. Duval proves on the NEAP it has one of the best district’s in the nation and are reward is a sixty-two-million-dollar deficit and more unfunded mandates.
Florida is routinely at the bottom of per pupil spending and when we factor in inflation, schools are getting less than they did in 2007 and that was before we had as many unfunded mandates and were required to share money with charter schools many of which are run by for profit companies. If Jacksonville is okay with that then they not the district’s staff are the ones who should sacrifice and if they are not, and I hope they are not, then it is past time they stood up and demanded our schools were properly funded.
If you would like to write a letter to the editor, here is the address.
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