Duval County school leaders encouraging parents to attend meetings on aging schools

Jacksonville, FL — Duval School leaders are inviting parents to a series of meetings on the school district’s aging public schools.

Over the last few months, Duval County Public Schools leaders have been sharing with community members and parents information about the district’s aging school problem. March 18th – kicks off the series of meetings that deal with draft recommendations for the district to move forward with all of the schools in the county.

There is nothing extremely wrong with the schools. Leaders are stressing that all schools are both safe and operational. Superintendent Dr. Diana Green says they cannot ignore the impact the condition is having on the success of students and staff.

“When facilities are not in good working order, our administrators spend a number of hours focusing on facilities instead of being instruction leaders and focused on the students.”

According to a spokesperson for Duval County Public Schools – the draft scenarios include:

• Construction of 30 new schools as either replacement on-site or on new sites.

• 17 consolidations impacting 42 schools with children from those schools attending new or renovated school buildings. (Any buildings no longer in use as a result of the consolidations would be demolished and the land sold to prevent former schools from becoming a future blight.)

• Security upgrades at all schools and removal of the majority of portables from schools across the district.

• Cutting more than 5,000 student seats from the district’s inventory and improving the district’s facility utilization rate.