Duval County's ongoing search for a permanent Superintendent is headed toward the finish line next week, but scrutiny from the Florida Department of Education suggests major questions about how the district is being run now.
Secretary Manny Diaz wrote Interim Superintendent Diana Kriznar with concern about what he called a "lack of progress and action" regarding student safety in the classroom, and a "lack of prioritization for the well-being of students, parents, and educators in the district."
He detailed the latest offenses from teachers at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, citing Christopher Allen-Black's arrest for "Exposure of Sexual Organs" and how the algebra instructor continued teaching nonetheless for weeks after the February incident, linking the most recent incident to 73 other collapses of teacher comportment belatedly reported to the state last year.
Diaz wants answers about the district's inability to regulate its teachers by Tuesday.
The letter came the same day as the School District told media not to report about answers given by Superintendent candidates in a public notice meeting next Monday for two days, breaking the Sunshine Law. And it came a day after the district announced its desire to put Jackson Short, who was a former friend of Kent Stermon and named cryptically in the former political powerbroker's last letter before his apparently self-inflicted death, atop the school district.
Sen. Clay Yarborough recently raised concerns about the latest issue of teacher comportment in a two-page letter to Kriznar, the School Board and Jacksonville General Counsel Michael Fackler. He was curious about the status of an investigation commissioned by the Office of General Counsel last year.
"For DCPS and the City's Office of General Counsel to delay the release of the taxpayer-funded investigation report related to the 2023 scandal suggests more wrongdoing is being hidden. Parents are demanding answers and our students deserve better. Where is the transparency," the Southside Republican asked last month.
However, a representative of Mayor Donna Deegan said the findings, in the possession of an outside legal firm contracted by Jacksonville's consolidated government, would be shielded from the public as litigation unfolds.
Ironically, that investigative report may have to surface now as part of a response to Tallahassee's inquiry.
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