flynn082

Last week's shooting outside a Raines high school football game rattled the district, and their desire to come up with a speedy solution is admirable, it's just to bad they went about it the wrong way. School board meetings are supposed to be noticed 48 hours in advance in order to give any relevant parties and the public notice. This school safety meeting Monday  however did not give 48 hour notice and even worse it was closed to the public.   From the Times Union: Earlier kickoffs and different game days will be the “new normal” at about a dozen public Duval County high school football games this fall after a triple-shooting at Friday’s Raines-Lee game. Duval Schools Superintendent Diana Greene announced the change at a 4 p.m. Monday press conference that followed a closed-door executive committee meeting of the School Board. It is not clear whether the game schedule was discussed at the 2:30 p.m. board meeting, as neither the Times-Union nor First Coast News were allow...

We have three very important school board races that will influence the direction of our school system for at least the next 4 years if not longer. District 2 at the beach, district 4 on the north side and district 6 on the west side and riverside will all have new representatives. Two of the people leaving, Paula Wright and Becki Couch have been fierce advocates for public education while the other school board member, Scott Shine, duped the people at the beach into letting him check get elected off his bucket list. This brings me to what the media has not told you about the three races. Darryl Willie was instructed by the school board to take down a campaign video where he put public school students on blast with out their parents permission. He also has a lot of small dollar donors which is cool, if it wasn't a self serving attempt bid on his part to get a lot of self serving donors. Why do I think this is the case? Well its because among them his wife gave him a dollar, though ...

From the I can't make this up file, Betsy DeVos is eyeing using grants intended for our most impoverished schools to buy guns for teachers. um, wha?!? From the New York Times When Congress created its academic support fund three years ago, lawmakers had in mind a pot of money that would increase student access to art and music, mental health and technology programs at the nation’s most impoverished schools. But back-to-back school shootings this year and inquiries from the state of Texas have prompted the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to examine whether to allow states to tap the school enrichment fund for another purpose: guns. Such a move would reverse a longstanding position taken by the federal government that it should not pay to outfit schools with weaponry. It would also undermine efforts by Congress to restrict the use of federal funding on guns. As recently as March, Congress passed a school safety bill that allocated $50 million a year to local school districts, but e...

A rose by any other name is still a rose. I hope I didn't butcher that quote to badly and my analogy isn't to obtuse. Kimberly Daniels and Darryl Willie share a huge similarity, and that is they are both supported by anti public education republicans. They have also both claimed to be democrats, Daniels is in fact the democrat incumbent for the house district 14 seat and Willie can be seen making the rounds at a lot of democrat functions as he tries to get on the school board too, but like I can claim I am not over weight and I don't have a love of peanut butter, that doesn't make it true. I think it is even more important to look at who supports a candidate than to listen to what they say because talk is cheap, while money is money. Both have received significant funds from republicans who have pushed charter schools and demonized and marginalized the teaching profession. heck Daniels was called a champion by Bush and Gary Chartrand funneled Willie five million dollars...

When you head to the polls this November I hope you remember that the Republican lead Florida legislature had opportunity after opportunity to properly fund school safety and refused at every turn. In my home town of Jacksonville  they sent 3.6 million dollars to do a job that would cost over ten and they compounded this farce by allocating only an extra 47 cents per student in discretionary spending. When Rick Scott in an admittedly  self serving move, meant, I am sure to generate publicity more than to protect kids, asked the state legislature  to release unused funds, the republican  leaders in Tallahassee  said no. From the Tampa Times: Florida’s top incoming legislative leaders are rejecting  Gov. Rick Scott’s push to redirect $58 million  so school districts can hire more campus police officers. The lawmakers say the state should stay with a program they crafted that puts armed security guards and staff members in its public schools. House Speake...

John Kirtley, who has a construction company that builds charter schools and who is Florida's voucher king, supporting schools that don't have to have teachers with degrees and who can teach junk science and history and Gary Chartrand a grocer by trade that parlayed huge donations to Rick Scott into a spot on the state board of education and who is notoriously anti teacher, jump out. And where I can go on and on about them, it's the amount of maximum donors, or donors that gave Chauncey 1000 dollars that I want to talk about here, because I don't know any teachers or families who can afford to throw a grand at a school board race. Dave Chauncey has raised $72,925.69, an impressive amount, but of that he received 57, 1000 dollar donations. That's 79 percent of his total. Even worse than the 75% of his money that comes from outside district 6. That's not from 57 donors by the way, Chartrand gave to him 4 times and Wayne Weaver at least twice. Who are his other big...

Let me just get right to it. From WOKV: Off-duty officers with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office are currently being used to protect more than half of Duval County’s public schools, so that the District complies with a new Florida law. But,  fresh in to the school year , there are big questions about who exactly will be picking up that bill.  The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office budget was recently under the spotlight by the City Council Finance Committee, as part of their hearings on  Mayor Lenny Curry’s $1.2 billion City budget proposal.  In that came a warning that JSO overtime hours would likely be up, because they’re mandating off-duty officers work shifts at Duval County Public School elementary schools.  “We’re gunna need this Council’s support, to support us in demanding that we get reimbursed. Because $12/hour doesn’t buy one of our JSO officers,” says Curry’s Chief Administrative Officer Sam Mousa.  Sheriff Mike Williams says they’ve been coordinatin...

Ugh, from the I can't make this stuff up file, Scott Shine one of the few supporters of amendment 8 admits it was against the law, but that didn't stop him from supporting it anyways.    from WJCT Shine, the only board member advocating for the amendment, said he didn’t find the ballot language misleading but he’s not surprised by the ruling. “Those who had been participating in the case said that the judge seemed to have a hard time understanding the issues at play,” Shine said. ”We had a sense this judge was probably going to rule against us.” But he said he’s not upset with the ruling as it’s “just another step in the process” of education reform. He said the ruling will “undoubtedly” be appealed. “There’s a lot of different options,” Shine said. “One is that a higher court could rule in our favor. Two, at some point the ballot language could be changed so that’s it’s consistent with the law.” http://news.wjct.org/post/duval-school-board-members-react-judge-throwing-educati...

Oh those pro school choice advocates, if they didn't have deception they wouldn't have anything. Fortunately for the state of Florida a judge said, not this time. From the Associate Press: A  Florida  judge on Monday threw off the November ballot a proposed constitutional amendment that includes a provision to make it easier to set up charter schools in the state. Circuit Judge John Cooper ruled that the amendment placed on the ballot by the state's Constitution Revision Commission does not tell voters what it really does. Cooper pointed out that the amendment does not even include the words "charter schools" in its wording. Cooper in his ruling stated that the "failure to use the term voters would understand" means that voters are not told the "chief purpose and effect of this proposal." Supporters of the amendment acknowledged that the purpose of the charter schools provision was to undo a previous court ruling that struck down a law that cre...

The district needed  a little over ten million dollars to properly secure our schools and Tallahassee sent them about 3.6 million dollars. Tallahassee allocated the district just an extra 47 cents per student in discretionary funds as costs rise and teachers leave. Speaking of teachers leaving, Tallahassee has kick started a teaching shortage. Now there is money in education, unfortunately more and more of it goes to charter schools of which about 350 have failed and many of the rest are run by for profit businesses and voucher schools that don't have to have teachers with degrees and can teach junk history and science because oversite is practically nill. I could go on and on an on, and that is why we need to elect representatives that are going to stand up for our public schools, people like Paula Wright in HD14. In Duval we have school board chair Paula Wright versus Kimberly Daniels a republican in democrats clothing. Most of Kimberly Daniels funding comes from republicans, she...

It's no secret that Teach for America is on its way out of town. They only brought in 50 new teachers and none of them are going to traditional DCPS schools just charters. Superintendent Green told me personally the district planned to honor last years contract but the district wasn't going to bring in any more. Teach for America Jacksonville did get 5 million, yes 5 million from the Quality Education for All initiative, money that never saw the inside of the classroom but even that money has to be running out by now. That brings us Darryl Willie's six figure salary. According to the supervisor of elections page, his salary is 120,000 dollars. Pretty good right? And an amount no teacher in Jacksonville will ever see, heck few principals that oversee hundreds of staff members and thousands of kids take home that kind of money. https://www.voterfocus.com/CampaignFinance/pdf_Duval/doc_791_20180621092152_Form_6.pdf According to the TFAJax page, he also manages a staff of 12 peo...

Oy vey, um, sigh Where do I begin? You know it would have been nice to have some true educators on the board and a few people that care about public education too but that hasn't been the case over the last 8 years. Instead we have board members like Gary Chartrand a grocer by trade who have done all they can do harm public education and quite frankly their actions have been both contrary to the public good and shameful. In short you can't do all you can to injure the teaching profession, such as attack their representatives, decrease their salaries, making certification harder and more expensive, while ratcheting up the pressure and stripping away creativity and flexibility and then wonder why we have a teaching shortage. Well you shouldn't be able too but the State Board of Education has.    From the Tampa Times: As millions of Florida's school children returned to classes this week, many schools struggled to find enough teachers greet and teach them. "We are ver...

Being completely honest, as a teacher, I am embarrassingly dependent on the internet. It’s my plan once things slow down to develop a few internet free lessons, so when the internet goes down I won’t have to stare at my kids after the thirty minutes’ worth of material I have printed out and ask, so what do you want to do? Teacher after teacher at school after school has told me they have faced the same issue, that for basically the better part of three days, three very important days when baseline assessments are supposed to occur the internet has been down. You know I don’t want to come down too hard on the district, after all the start of school really caught us off guard, I mean who even knew what day it was? Oh wait, we all did, which means the district not being ready is inexcusable. This is an amazing time of year, thousands of teachers and tens of thousands of students filled with excitement but it’s also a stressful time of the year, compounded by the lack of what has become a ...

I think having these safety assistants in our schools is a terrible idea because they make our schools less safe. I have grave concerns that with so little training they may mistake a disruption for a life and death situation, that as well as putting guns around children where accidents can happen. I believe trained professionals not glorified security guards was the way to go. All that being said, there is one good thing happening and that's Duval isn't rushing to fill the positions.    From WJCT: The district needed to hire 105 safety assistants over the summer, but as of the first day of school on Monday, just 24 had started work. In the meantime JSO sent 130 officers to work in Duval’s elementary schools as well as some charter schools.   Duval County School Police Director Micheal Edwards said he’s received about 400 safety assistant applications, although some of them are duplicates, so he didn’t have a true number of applicants. The assistants are trained thro...

**corrected and updated** I may be a %$^& but I am not a $%^&#*  %^&$.  Okay, a reader said they felt the district only told Willie to take down one video, while the infamous one of him dancing could stay but in the future he needed permission to use district property.   I read, one had to come down, and you should really take the other one down. I would also argue that anything a candidate puts on his page is an implicit ask for donations, but to be clear I asked the district and they responded. Hi Chris, To clarify, the letter requests that the Andrew Robinson video be removed. For the “Duval County Public Schools Administration Property Video” we  just advise that he get permission to use school board property in the future. So there you have it, but I don't think it changes for one second his terrible judgement for putting kids on blast without their parents permission or for the use of district property to make a dance video but it also doe...

If you read the letter, the district can be very polite when it wants to be. When it sent me a letter threatening to sue me it had a different vibe. The author of the letter Brian Mcduffie is very polite and he's right when he thanks Willie for taking an interest in our children, we need a lot more people to do so. Whether you want to call it a village or a team, we need people involved. The thing here however, is this is indicative of who Willie is. He should have known this was against policy, this isn't his first time running for school board. It could have been an honest mistake, like all the money he has taken from charters and the disparaging mailers he sent out last go around, or he knew it was wrong, which is what I think and he just didn't care.  He doesn't care that he puts an ever revolving door of novice teachers in our neediest children's classrooms, why should he care that he uses some of these same children as props. He put these kids on blast without...

The supervisor of elections has a precinct finder where if you put in an address  it shows you your sample ballot. https://www.duvalelections.com/Voter-Information/Precinct-Finder I nerded out and did that to all of Chauncey's donors. When I did this he had raised 67, 452.45. Of that 16,850 dollars came from within the district and 50,602.45 had come from outside the district. Since then he has brought in another, 3,610. of that 2,860 came from outside the district. So of the 71,062.45, 53,482.45 came from outside,  the district or 75 percent. Now there are a few caveats, a few addresses were protected and a few others didn't come up with a precinct, probably businesses, but they would not meaningfully change the results. Chauncey who has said he isn't against amendment 8, a poison pill proposition that would end local control of education received the maximum donation of 1000, 49 times not from 49 different people because Gary Chartrand and several others manipulated the l...

When asked about amendment 8, all of the candidates in district 2 said they were against it, all except one, Dave Chauncey. I think it is more likely that he is for it but knows people who support pubic education will be outraged. That and most of his financial backers are for it and he doesn't want to upset them. Becki Couch knows it is a terrible deal and introduced a resolution against the amendment. Here is the thing, if you like and respect the job Becki Couch has done, and I do, then voting for Dave Chauncey would be a slap in the face as he would seek to dismantle what she has done, treat the position like a part time position, while serving special interests groups that would dismantle our public schools. Yes, that was a mouthful so let me stop and let Mrs. Couch explain while voting for Chauncey is a terrible idea. Amendment 8 Explained by Board Member Becki Couch from Duval Schools on Vimeo . There are several good candidates in the running to replace Couch, Chauncey is...

Can you match the pictures to the names?    Thier names are Scott Shine, Fel Lee and Nick Howland, notice any similarities? One is a former school board representative from district 2, the other is the current and the third seeks to be the next. Here are some more similarities, they are all rich, white, conservative businessmen. They have all taken money from voucher and charter school interests. They all have or had before they were elected, nominal education experience. Friends, there is a real choice this election because district 2 has some excellent candidates, you can choose one of them or you could pick more of the same. District 2, the city is watching and they expect better from you.

Mr. Sloan doesn't seem to have a lot of regard for professional teachers. In the past he has proposed assigning teachers to schools and at the JPEF district 2 forum he made the startling claim that professional educators have failed.  Start the video at about the 59 minute mark https://www.facebook.com/JaxPEF/videos/10155291251626307/ "Experienced educators your way hasn't worked" that is a direct quote from Mr. Sloan as he was talking about a teacher/community ride along program he hoped to introduce. He said he wants to do something a little different, well calling out teachers and telling them they are failures isn't exactly new. he joins a long line of people who don't respect the teaching profession when he says it. It's they same thing Nick Howland told me when I asked him if there were good teachers at F and D schools. He shrugged his shoulders and begrudgingly told me no. It's the same thing Gary Chartrand, Jeb Bush, Betsy DeVos and many others...

Darryl Willie has a billboard. Have you seen it? Does it make you want to vote for him? What about his dance video? Do his dance moves make you want to vote for him? At the district 4 school board forum he said his dance moves can bring people together. At the 1:51 moment, he said people that care about dancing will gravitate towards him and that he had to be dynamic to bring those people into the fold.  https://www.facebook.com/JaxPEF/videos/10155291251626307/ Sigh Willie equates being able to do the KiKi shuffle with being on the school board.  The thing is, if you care about dance moves then Willie is probably your candidate. However if you care about public schools, and if you care about the teaching profession then he is not. He is all style, no substance. Willie has shown over and over again that he will say or do anything to get your vote, what he hasn't shown is ideas, what he hasn't shown is details. District 4 has several good and qualifies candidates, Willie isn'...

And does a better job than I could have. I received permission to use this but they wanted to remain anonymous. My play by play... Their intros... Charlotte Joyce is the worst choice of the candidates. DCPS has some of the best trends in discipline. Her suggestions would send us backward. I like Monica Tookes focus on equity and barriers in access and Karen Nulands focus on safety. Chauncey wants to focus on achievement but he’s a KIPP supporter. KIPPs achievement ain’t great so which is it? Teacher retention... Charlotte Joyce must have been trained as a teacher in the 1950s. Who are these teachers she speaks of that don’t know what an IEP is??? Having new teachers go to the lowest performing schools is exactly where you don’t want them l earning. Duh. Karen Nuland creating an open climate for reporting difficulties makes a lot of sense. Tookes idea that there is better mentoring and time for professional learning communities for teachers is strong. She is also spot on about the BS su...