Duval Schools needs to find $97M. But where?

When the Duval County School Board on Monday approved six school closures, Superintendent Christopher Bernier alluded to more budget cuts ahead, as the district expects to be about $100 million short for next year’s budget. 

The school closures won’t go nearly far enough – they’re expected to save a little less than $3.3 million for the coming school year. 

Bernier has billed school closures as a way to save money without affecting staff, though he said Monday that one of the primary ways the district will save money when closing a school and consolidating it into another is removing redundant administrative personnel.

Before Monday’s vote, outgoing District 7 school board member Lori Hershey asked Bernier about other options for cuts, if not closing schools.

“There’s a number of different things we could do at the risk of making people –” Bernier said with hesitation. “No, I’m going to be transparent.”

He then listed a series of cuts he may recommend in order to find the remaining 97% of the needed savings:

• Student transportation, particularly to magnet school programs
• Materials and supplies for teachers
• After-school programs
• School support personnel

Additionally, Bernier said class sizes could increase.

“I mean, a hundred million dollars is a lot of money to find,” Bernier said.

Jacksonville Today requested information about how much the district currently spends on each of the categories Bernier listed but did not receive it by this story’s deadline.

State records, though, show that during the 2023-24 fiscal year, Duval Schools spent almost $213 million on instructional expenses categorized as “materials and supplies,” about $100 million on student support services, and about $78 million on transportation.

Why the shortfall

Earlier this year, interim Superintendent Dana Kriznar said the impending loss of pandemic funding could mean the elimination of more than 700 staff jobs. She later scrapped that plan. Since 2020, Duval Schools had received $345.7 million in funding from the federal government because of emergency legislation passed during the pandemic, including almost $188 million during fiscal year 2023-24 alone. That funding stream expired at the end of September.

Concurrently, the district’s operating expenses have increased steadily over the last few years, including the rising costs of construction materials, food and supplies. 

Duval has compensated for its rising costs by using reserves to make up the difference. But a state law requires school districts to hold 3% of their budget in a reserve fund as a buffer. And, according to a district spokesperson, dipping into those reserves any further would risk a state takeover of the district’s finances.

A board all aboard?

Tough decisions on the budget will soon be in the hands of a School Board that includes three new members, including District 5’s incoming representative, Reggie Blount, who said Tuesday that an “independent state audit” of the district’s finances is warranted.

Many of the schools approved to close soon are in his District 5, which covers parts of Jacksonville’s Westside, Northwest Jax, Downtown and Ortega. A dozen or more other schools are also on an ever-evolving list of potential closures after that. 

Asked about school closures after his victory on Tuesday, Blount told Jacksonville Today, “I would have to look at, what are they looking at, you know? What are they not looking at? Why does it keep changing? What are the dynamics? And I just don’t have all the information right now.”

Blount, together with August election winners Tony Ricardo and Melody Bolduc, join April Carney and Charlotte Joyce to lock in a strong conservative majority on Duval’s seven-member school board. Like Bernier, the new superintendent, all five representatives came with the endorsement of Moms for Liberty, a far-right advocacy group. 

It’s a stark departure from just a couple of years ago, when Duval’s school board and former Superintendent Diana Green frequently clashed with the state over issues like pandemic regulations and book-review laws. 

At an election-night celebration hosted by the Duval GOP, Jacksonville City Council member Chris Miller said Bernier recently told him he’s looking forward to what can be achieved now that the superintendent, School Board and members of the GOP-controlled state Legislature are on a similar page.

After this story was published, Miller and a Duval Schools spokesperson contacted Jacksonville Today to clarify Miller’s extemporaneous election night speech.  

Miller says he did not intend to attribute the sentiment to Bernier but rather he is personally encouraged by the election of conservative school board members and what he perceives as an alignment between the superintendent, the new board and the state policymakers.

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Jacksonville Today’s Will Brown contributed to this story.