A Senator from Jacksonville is pushing the Duval County School District for accountability about the latest in a series of issues involving teachers at a local school of the arts.
Sen. Clay Yarborough, in a two-page letter to Acting Superintendent Dana Krisnar, the School Board and Jacksonville General Counsel Michael Fackler, is expressing "serious concerns about the immediate safety" of students at Douglas Anderson in the wake of a February arrest of a teacher over a "sexual incident" covered recently in the local press.
"The fact that the district was aware of this and allowed the teacher to remain in direct proximity with students and chose not to inform parents until last week is beyond comprehension," Yarborough writes.
Indeed, the time between the Feb. 27 arrest of Christopher Allen-Black for what the school principal called a "misdemeanor charge of exposure of sexual organs" in Orlando at a Disney resort and the announcement of his reassignment to parents (as the "presumption of innocence" applies) on Wednesday, April 17, is notable for Yarborough.
The accused is the fifth Douglas Anderson teacher in 14 months to be removed from classroom duties in one way or another.
Yarborough asserts that the pattern shows that students are in "imminent danger of harm by adults" at Douglas Anderson, and extends his argument to assert that it shows "all Duval County students at risk."
He also notes that the district hasn't been transparent about the investigation it launched last year in the wake of the former vocal department chair acting lewdly with a student at the time, ahead of the chair's retirement, and other charges of "inappropriate touching and sexually-charged communications" from teachers.
Yarborough seeks to find out when the investigation report will be released, whether district policy requires parental notification of an employee's arrest, how the "faculty vetting" process will change going forward, whether there will be a leadership change at the school, and what safeguards are in place to stop the troubling trend.
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