Free speech fight simmers at Duval School Board

The Duval County School Board is grappling with the limits of free speech — both when it comes to teachers’ social media posts and some controversial statements made by its own members during meetings and online. 

Last week’s meeting began with a protest over teachers’ being investigated for social media posts and ended with police escorting out a parent after her shouting match with a school board member who was wearing a T-shirt that some attendees perceived as a political statement. Somewhere in between, the board approved paying to settle a lawsuit by a teacher the district disciplined years ago for politically charged social media posts. 

Since then, social media activity by board member April Carney, which led to calls for her to resign, has kept the discussion going over who has the right to say what.

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Rain before the board’s meeting last Tuesday evening didn’t keep several dozen protestors from demonstrating in front of Duval Schools headquarters. They came to show support for Hope McMath, a Douglas Anderson School of the Arts art history teacher who’s been removed from her classroom over recent social media posts criticizing City Council member Rory Diamond. 

McMath was pulled from her classroom on Sept. 15 after she called Diamond a “grand wizard,” a reference to the Ku Klux Klan, over his proposed budget amendment that would have barred city spending on undocumented immigrants and on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. 

According to an employee close to the investigation, on Sept. 17, state investigators arrived at Douglas Anderson and spoke with at least 15 people about McMath. 

Typically, state investigations of teacher misconduct start at the district level and reach the state only after a referral. 

In a written statement, McMath’s lawyer, John Phillips, called the investigation “persecution.”

“If we are going to weaponize speech based on its content, it not only violates the First Amendment, but will be detrimental to democracy,” he said.

Tension about speech issues boiled over during the October school board meeting, as various public commenters expressed support for or opposition to investigating teachers’ social media posts.

The controversy didn’t end there.

On the dais, all seven board members wore pink — a nod to breast-cancer awareness — but four of them included white lettering across the front of their shirts: “This is the Turning Point.”

School board Chair Charlotte Joyce said the idea for the shirts came to her as she watched conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s memorial service and that she’d supplied them to the three other members who wanted to wear them: Carney, Melody Bolduc and Tony Ricardo. 

“In some way I wanted to do something to remember, just to remember, this man who lost his life. And so, I thought what is that? It’s a pink T-shirt, obviously. And I could put ‘freedom’ on it because he died with the word ‘freedom’ on a shirt, but I said, ‘I think what’s better is to put on there: ‘This is the Turning Point,'” Joyce explained during the meeting.

Of the more than 70 community members who addressed the board during public comments, 10 criticized the shirts that celebrated Kirk, who was beloved by his millions of social media followers and did not shy away from controversy.

“It’s deeply hypocritical to condemn Hope McMath for exercising free speech while flaunting your own through partisan apparel from the dais,” one person said during her public comment.

Carney calling the critical comments “hateful vitriol” and asserted she’s “consistently reached my hand across the aisle to benefit students.”

“I am very upset about people that think it’s OK to celebrate murder…You never celebrate somebody’s death,” Carney said. “That man was a husband, he was a son, he was a brother, he was a father of two children —”

“He didn’t celebrate Black people!” a parent shouted at Carney from the audience.

Carney and the woman continued yelling over each other as Joyce asked them to stop. Police escorted the woman out of the building.

As she wrapped up the meeting, Joyce also spoke about Kirk, saying he’d been killed for what she characterized as wanting to have an “open dialogue.”

“We come up here tonight and just get berated and get berated and get berated,” Joyce lamented.

In the days following the meeting, an X account called @LibsofDuval identified some of the public commenters who’d been critical of the board, and Carney tagged the influential @LibsofTikTok, a conservative account known for encouraging harassment of liberal targets. That led state Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, to call for Carney’s resignation. Carney has since deleted the post and responded: “I frankly don’t give a damn what @AngieNixon thinks.”

Avoiding a free-speech repeat?

The school board could continue to confront teachers’ free speech issues with more social media investigations underway — these ones also related to Kirk. The day after his death last month, Florida Education Commissioner Anistasios Kamoutsas sent a letter to school districts informing them that his office would investigate employees who posted negative comments about Kirk.

“Although educators have First Amendment rights, those rights do not extend without limit into their professional duties,” Kamoutsas wrote.

In Duval County, it’s not known exactly how many teachers are under investigation at the district level — though the state is investigating at least two, according to Superintendent Chris Bernier.

In Clay County, at least one teacher is under investigation, and Kamoutsas announced his intent to revoke the teacher’s license. 

A spokesperson for St. Johns County Schools says three teachers were investigated internally but the state has not followed up on them.

Five years ago, Thomas Caggiano was a math teacher at Sandalwood High School. When Duval Schools investigated him for “transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic and racist social media posts,” it sparked a district-wide conversation about how teachers use social media. 

In late 2020, Caggiano was suspended without pay for five days over those Facebook posts. Joyce, who is now the board chair, expressed concern at the time that “policing teachers’ Facebook accounts could be a slippery slope,” reported The Florida Times-Union. However, Joyce and the other board members delivered a unanimous vote in favor of his suspension. 

The Florida Department of Education also investigated Caggiano, resulting in a letter of reprimand. 

Caggiano appealed the decisions, and earlier this year, Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal sided with him, saying Caggiano had made the posts from his personal computer.

At a workshop last month, School Board member Cindy Pearson said, “I do want to remind the board that the focus of this case was social media posts on a private account, and I’d like to know what staff is doing to ensure that we won’t have a repeat of this situation.”

Bernier told her teachers do not check all their rights at the schoolhouse door.

“The significant metric or litmus test of this would be the significant disruption of the school building,” he said. “So if their posts create protests out front, they don’t allow school buses to come and go, or the students walk out and protest and interrupt their instruction only because of something a teacher posted — that’s the standard at which you have a disruptive First Amendment case.” 

The Caggiano comparison was on several minds at the October meeting where the school board approved his settlement for an undisclosed amount.

“The district courts have just determined in February that disciplining someone for their political views on social media is wrong. Nothing has changed since then,” one commenter said. “Just because you don’t like it — so what? I don’t like a lot of the things I’ve heard tonight.”

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Jacksonville Today reporter Noah Hertz contributed to this story.