JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Duval County Public Schools confirmed Wednesday that a former principal and a former assistant principal at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts are under internal investigation.
This comes after other investigations led to the ousting of two teachers there last year for misconduct. Interviews with students suggest those school leaders did not properly report allegations of teacher misconduct in the 2022-23 school year.
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The district has been under scrutiny since the arrest of a longtime DA music teacher Jeffrey Clayton last year, which resulted in a flood of additional allegations and changes to the district’s policies and procedures for investigating misconduct.
In August of 2022, DCPS records show a student told then-principal at Douglas Anderson Tina Wilson and Vice Principal Lourdes Gee that a teacher was talking about their sex life, leaving the student “very shaken,” but she reported “no one from the administration followed up with her” until someone else submitted a complaint months later. The teacher was later removed from the classroom and asked not to come back.
In February of 2023, the former vice principal signed two complaints from students about another teacher. One reported he rubbed “his hand on her thigh” during class while reaching for her student ID in her lap. Another said he had “rubbed her back, and put his hand on her shoulder” and that he was in the “personal bubble” of girls in class every day.
However, records show the vice principal did not kick the complaints up to the district level until another complaint was made later. That teacher was also later not invited back to teach at DA following an investigation.
DA alumna Shyla Jenkins told the I-TEAM she was in touch with the parent of a student who complained about being touched by her teacher.
“Their solution was to remove the child from the classroom and not deal with the situation,” Jenkins said. “So it made the child feel like she was, you know, doing something wrong, or had done something wrong by going to the school administrators to say, ‘Hey, I don’t feel comfortable here.’”
A spokesperson for DCPS confirms both Wilson and Gee remain under investigation more than a year later.
Wilson stayed on in her role as principal at DA until a few months ago, when she moved to a new position as Duval County Public Schools Supervisor of Exceptional Education Services.
The Vice Principal, Lourdes Gee, resigned for personal reasons in July of 2023, records show. A Jacksonville charter school’s website shows she’s now principal there.
Records show an investigator at the district was supposed to investigate Wilson after it was reported she did not follow up on that student complaint from 2022, but that investigator was reassigned and then retired as he faced the possibility of termination for misconduct.
He told the I-TEAM he was in the process of investigating Wilson and Gee when he retired.
The I-TEAM tried to get in touch with Wilson and Gee to hear their sides of the story but they did not immediately respond.