How did Duval Schools’ 7 legislative priorities fare?

Going into the legislative session that just ended, Duval Schools had a list of seven topics it hoped to see Tallahassee lawmakers address. But at the close of the least-productive session in recent memory, most of the district’s requests went unanswered. 

The legislative priorities ranged from hyper-local issues (like securing permission to hire the school district’s own attorney) to statewide concerns the district threw its weight behind (like changing the funding model for Florida’s school choice programs). 

Most went nowhere.

The J-Bill

Status: On its way to Gov. DeSantis

Because of Jacksonville’s consolidated structure, the school district is considered part of the city government. Sort of. Though the School Board is its own independent decision-making body, the school district is assigned an attorney from the city’s Office of General Counsel.

Current school board Chair Charlotte Joyce has prioritized changing this arrangement to allow the school board to hire its own independent attorney. The move requires a change to the city charter, which has to be approved by Tallahassee.

House Bill 4049, by Rep. Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville, passed the House 108-5 and the Senate 36-0. It’s headed to the governor’s desk, and he’s expected to sign it.

School choice funding model change

Status: Passed the Senate but died in the House

Florida funds its school districts according to a complicated calculation that state lawmakers must approve annually. How much money a district receives depends in part on how many students are enrolled at checkpoints throughout each school year. Last school year, the state money ran out. Because of a $47 million shortfall, districts didn’t receive payments from the state on time. And some private school providers who take state-funded scholarships (or what are sometimes called “school choice vouchers”) say their payments were also delayed. 

A state audit showed the voucher programs as a whole received nearly $400 million more than what was originally allocated to them. In November, the auditor general’s office reported its findings to the Senate Appropriations Committee and recommended separating voucher funding from the school districts’ funding, instead of keeping it lumped together in one large pot. 

For this and a handful of other reasons, Duval Schools encouraged state lawmakers to separate the money. (Doing so would also make it easier to track students who move between school choice programs and public schools — and so ensure state funding follows the child.)

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Pensacola, filed a bill that would have done just that: SB 318. Two Democrats joined two Republicans and an independent as co-sponsors. It passed the Senate 38-0, but the House never took up a companion bill — rendering the bill effectively dead.

Student safety fusion center

Status: Nothing yet

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement operates a network of “fusion centers” — law enforcement agencies that agree to share resources, information and expertise. Duval Schools wants the state to appropriate $500,000 to establish a fusion center focused on student safety that would enable video feeds and help staff and first responders in case of a crisis. So far, there’s no sign of fusion-center funding in the Senate or House budgets, but because lawmakers must return in a month to keep working on the budget, there’s still time for that to change.

A bill focused on school safety, HB 757, did pass and is on its way to the governor’s desk. That bill expands Florida’s “guardian” program, which allows certain faculty and staff to be trained to carry weapons on campus, to postsecondary institutions, and it also provides for some sharing of law enforcement records — but it doesn’t fund the specific “24/7 monitoring operations center” Duval Schools wants to see.

Artificial intelligence teaching resources

Status: Timed out

Duval Schools called for the state to “invest in a statewide, teacher-centered approach to artificial intelligence K-12 education” — something it said aligned with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last year.

A few bills this session addressed AI in education in some way — but none really tackled it from the angle of professional development for teachers. 

Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, introduced a bill, SB 1194, that would have required the Department of Education to adopt statewide standards for AI and provide some teacher training, but the bill never got a hearing. ​​CS/CS/HB 1503, which would require high school students to receive some AI instruction, had more traction — the Senate passed it unanimously — but it still died in the House. Sen. Tom Leek’s, R-St. Augustine, “AI Bill of Rights” (CS/SB 482) had DeSantis’ support but got pushback from the White House, which said the federal government, not states, should regulate AI. It passed 35-2 in the Senate but died in the House. 

Facilities planning flexibility

Status: Some Senate action but no House traction

Duval Schools administrators and board members frequently bemoan Florida’s facilities planning regulations. Specifically, they say the state’s method for calculating how much space is available in the district’s buildings — called the Florida Inventory of School Houses, or the FISH report — is outdated. They wanted lawmakers to address these rules in hopes that more accurate calculations would help schools avoid having to give space to charter schools, rent-free. 

Several bills might have addressed this grievance, which is shared by a number of school districts in the state. Sen. Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville, filed SB 1738, for example. It wasn’t focused entirely on modernizing the FISH report, but it did call for a more thorough review of school buildings. The bill was reviewed favorably in committee but did not make it to the finish line for a vote.

More money for exceptional education students and English language learners

Status: Probably not

Public schools are required to provide an array of specialized services to students with specific needs. Citing a growing demand and a shortage of trained teachers, Duval Schools asked the state to increase funding for these students. (District-employed speech-language pathologists, for example, often advocate for themselves during school board meetings. The district spends quite a bit of money on “costly emergency contracts” to employ temp workers, according to the board’s legislative platform.) 

No one championed this cause during the regular session by writing legislation that would update required funding allocations. But, because of the ongoing dispute between the Senate and the House in how to structure Florida’s education allocations, there could still be major changes ahead for ESE funding.

Schools of Hope

Status: Nope

The last item on Duval Schools’ legislative priority list — opposing the controversial expansion of the state’s Schools of Hope charter school program — was added to Duval’s platform two months after the first six items and over the objections of three board members, including Joyce, the board chair.

Schools of Hope are a special category of charter school in Florida. The laws passed last session opened the door to districts having to host charters within public school buildings while also bearing much of the cost. Duval Schools, in the midst of a multi-year stretch of closing under-enrolled schools to help balance its budget, received dozens of letters of intent from charter operators wanting to use its buildings.

Districts across the state publicly voiced concerns about the program’s expansion, though Duval Schools leaders, including Joyce and Superintendent Chris Bernier, repeatedly said they preferred to lobby “quietly.”  

Lawmakers introduced bills that would have outright repealed last year’s Schools of Hope expansion: SB 424, introduced by Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, and a companion bill by Rep. Ashley Gantt, D-Miami. The bills didn’t progress. 

However, in February, the state Board of Education addressed some of districts’ Schools of Hope concerns through internal rulemaking. Critics say the rules are a “step in the right direction” but the program could still be financially detrimental for districts. 

During a recent state board meeting, Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas called the pushback about Schools of Hope “hysteria [that] was overly dramatized” and thanked two Duval school board members by name for being “adults in the room.”

“I particularly want to give praise to Charlotte Joyce and April Carney out of Duval County. They had always been on the phone with me, working behind the scenes,” Kamoutsas said. “It didn’t need to become a…negative public spectacle.”

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Jacksonville Today reporter Mike Mendenhall contributed to this story.