JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Duval County School Board is scheduled to vote Nov. 4 on its Master Facility Plan.
If approved, several schools would close at the end of the school year.
Families say the district should look at other options.
During the final public hearing Tuesday night on the Master Facility Plan, parents and students asked why the plan includes closing schools in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Several people specifically spoke out in support of the Young Men and Women’s Leadership Academy.
RELATED: Coverage of the changing DCPS Master Facility Plan
“We cannot tell our students we believe in school choice,” one person said at the podium. “The teachers are amazing the students are amazing.”
Ayden Johnson is a student at the academy and is pleading for his school to be taken off the proposed list for closure.
“I hope the school board really puts some focus and heart in to our school,” Johnson said after the meeting. “I ask that they do not close our school down. I asked for the community to come out to our school and see what we do as a school in the community around us.”
The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Leadership Academy is currently at Eugene Butler Middle School, which is a magnet school.
It is the only tuition-free public school in Duval County that offers single-gender education. Female and male students are in separate wings.
It has smaller class sizes, offering more one-on-one attention.
Schanee Smith’s son also attends the school. She said neither the superintendent nor school board members have been able to tell her what school her son would have to attend if the academy closes.
Smith said that is troublesome to her.
“I am hurt by that,” Smith said. “I would like to know about my son’s education and how I am going to continue to further it with the promises that were made to me but now you have no answers. How are we supposed to trust this school system?”
If ultimately approved, the Master Facility Plan would see the academy close.
The district’s Bridge to Success middle and high school programs, which are currently housed at St. Claire Evans Elementary and Henry Kite Elementary, would then consolidate at Butler.
In addition to the academy, six other schools have already been told that if the board approves this plan, they will close at the end of the school year.
These are the six elementary schools:
- Annie R. Morgan students into Biltmore
- Kings Trail students into Beauclerc
- Don Brewer students into Merrill Road
- Susie Tolbert students into S.P. Livingston
- George Washington Carver students into Rufus E. Payne
- Hidden Oaks students into Cedar Hills