JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Duval County Public Schools are continuing to refine a plan to close and consolidate schools. This comes as the district is facing a shortfall of $1.4 billion in a plan to repair and replace aging buildings in a time when fewer students are attending the district’s schools.
On Thursday, the Duval County school board reviewed what’s been called a “community feedback driven idea,” which is a proposal for school closures and consolidations based on input from the community. Overall, it would result in leaving five more elementary schools open than previously planned.
Earlier this year, an outside firm proposed shuttering dozens of Duval County Public Schools in an effort to right-size the district, prompting outrage from some school communities, including at Fishweir Elementary School and Atlantic Beach Elementary.
But that original proposal didn’t include any local input so the district sought that out, with public forums, surveys, and community review groups, where each school and feeder pattern was represented.
A plan based on those groups’ input was released Thursday called the “Community Feedback Driven Idea.”
READ MORE: Original presentation on potential changes to the Master Facility Plan | UPDATE: See the full Master Facility Plan update presentation
It calls for Ed White High School to be merged into a rebuilt Westside High, which is a change from when Westside was slated to close and merge into Ed White.
Seabreeze Elementary and Arlington Heights Elementary School would also be rebuilt.
The Community Driven Feedback Idea also calls for the following elementary schools to stay open:
- San Mateo
- West Riverside
- Stockton
- Holiday Hill
- Thomas Jefferson
- Fishweir
- Atlantic Beach
But there are some elementary schools the proposal calls for adding to the closure list: Woodland Acres, Whitehouse, and Ramona Boulevard.
Tiffany Clark is a parent leader at “Parents Who Lead,” her children attended Duval County Schools. She was at the board meeting workshop on Thursday.
“My biggest concern with the proposal is that we just need to make a decision. We need to make sure that the community is informed. We need to make sure that families know where their children are going to be. As it relates to school closures, school consolidations, and then, from a financial standpoint, we definitely need to be clear about how much money we need to spend to keep our schools open, and where the gaps are and how we’re going to resolve that,” Clark said.
Lauren Agresti, is a Stockton Elementary School mom. She’s also involved with the parent focus group for the Master Facility Plan. She’s relieved that the new proposal keeps Stockton open but she’s concerned that she didn’t hear much about cutting costs from board members on Thursday.
“You know that we hear about that billion-dollar gap, and there were lots of board members saying that they’d like to see this school not close. So it was more additions rather than deletions. So it was like the budget was kind of going up from there, not going down. The superintendent Bernier said it was kind of making him slightly twitch a little bit, because he was not going in the cost savings direction,” she said.
Agresti said some of the feeder patterns don’t make sense for parents who choose magnet programs like the STEM program at Stockton.
“It seems as those are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole when trying to force feeder patterns that don’t truly exist. We’re in the Riverside feeder pattern, and you’d be hard-pressed to find students from Stockton that go to Ed White High School or Riverside High School. We move on to different high schools and middle schools, Paxton, Stanton, La Villa, these are all the magnet schools that our students go on to, not our particular feeder pattern,” she said.
Clark is hoping through this process that the board can keep the discussion equitable for every school district.
“It resonated loud and clear that because a certain presence was made on a certain side of town, and that same attention wasn’t given to another side of town. It definitely came across as well, because those voices were not as loud, they did not get that attention that they needed. And so I think that we definitely need to look at that if an “A” school is an “A” school, if we’re closing “A” schools, then we’re not going to close “A” schools anywhere, not just on one side of town,” Clark said.
The board was presented with a list of common values the survey and community review found most important, from maintaining neighborhood schools and walkability to prioritizing highly graded schools.
Throughout the Master Facility Plan talks, the board has emphasized that it is a work in progress.
Some board members say they felt disappointed with the way the criteria for consolidation was used.
RELATED: School consolidation plan hangs over Duval school district on first day of classes
“The common values need to be held consistently across all communities. It is troubling to me when an A school at the beach gets taken off the list and an A school in Arlington gets closed,” Board member Dr. Kelly Coker said. “That’s two separate communities, and I recognize that a school’s community is not as loud, but that’s not ethical or fair.”
Board member April Carney said she wants district leadership to consider making more schools K-6 to keep families leaving after elementary school.
“Part of the problem is our families are leaving at 6th grade because they do not want their children at a mega middle school. I think we need to take a look at that,” she said.
Keeping students in public schools is crucial for the district, where spending has been outpacing revenue for years as fewer students fill its classrooms.
According to the district, it typically costs more per student to keep smaller schools open.
Superintendent Dr. Christopher Bernier and the presentation team emphasized this new version does not eliminate the billion-dollar shortfall in the budget, which was the goal of the first Master Facility Plan.
The board will continue to review this proposal until Sept. 4. The review groups will get back together on Sept. 5.
On Sept. 17, the updated plan will come back to the school board and, as of now, the board may vote on a plan as soon as Oct. 1.
Dr. Bernier also indicated Thursday that the board will have additional difficult decisions to make in the coming months as staff as work on the budget for the 2025-26 school year gets underway.
Updated Interactive Map: Duval County School Board’s updated proposal to close & realign schools
