City Council Member Tyrona Clark-Murray addresses the School Board on March 3, 2026. | Megan Mallicoat, Jacksonville Today
Published on October 7, 2026 at 4:28 pm
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The Duval County School Board voted Tuesday to suspend Jacksonville City Council Member Tyrona Clark-Murray, who is also a teacher at duPont Middle School. In a statement Wednesday, Clark-Murray said she plans to appeal the 10-day unpaid suspension to the state.
According to the statement, Clark-Murray has worked for Duval Schools for 33 years and has never received discipline. Suspensions are the third step in the district’s four-level progressive discipline process.
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“The District skipped multiple steps of progressive discipline in this case and cases like it have previously been overturned by the Courts,” the statement says.
Clark-Murray was removed from her classroom in May pending the outcome of an HR investigation.
The district has not specified what prompted the investigation and did not supply requested public records of the investigation and her personnel file to Jacksonville Today by this story’s publication.
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According to news reporting at the time, Clark-Murray self-reported that she’d kicked an exceptional-ed student who had first kicked her.
Her suspension was part of the consent agenda, which board passed without discussion on Tuesday.
Before Tuesday’s School Board vote, Duval Teachers United attorney Stephanie Schaap addressed the board on Clark-Murray’s behalf during public comment. Without naming the person to whom she was referring, Schaap raised concerns that a board member had posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, about Clark-Murray’s case and shown a “clear bias and prejudice.” She asked the board member, later identified to be District 2 rep April Carney, to recuse herself from voting on Clark-Murray’s suspension.
“A fair quasi-judicial proceeding requires more than simply just having a vote. It requires the decision-maker to [be] open to the evidence and not to appear to have prejudged the outcome,” Schaap said.
Carney did not recuse herself and voted in favor of the suspension.
Carney afterward told Jacksonville Today her social media comments “reflected the seriousness of the allegations while expressly recognizing her right to due process and the need for a complete investigation.”
“When this matter ultimately came before the School Board, I considered the information and recommendation presented to us and cast my vote based on the record before the Board. I am confident that I fulfilled my responsibilities as a Board member fairly and impartially,” Carney wrote in a text message. “My individual vote was also not determinative of the outcome; the Board’s decision would have been the same regardless of how I voted.”
Only one of the seven board members, Darryl Willie, voted against the consent agenda. He afterward told Jacksonville Today his no vote was mostly in response to book removals that were also grouped in with the suspension.
According to state records, Clark-Murray has been a certified teacher in Florida since 1993. She has served on the City Council for about four years.
She declined to comment for this story, citing her lawyer’s advice.
