What the Duval School Board’s travel spat says about shifting politics

Ongoing disagreements over the conferences that Duval School Board members attend reflect the shifting priorities of the board after November’s elections. 

The district’s long-standing membership in an urban education association was called into question last week, at the same time the board recently sent five of its members to a conference hosted by a startup group focused on “parental rights” — a rallying cry that conservatives are using to reshape education policy nationwide. 

Shifting affiliations 

At its most recent meeting, last week, the seven-member Duval school board hotly deliberated over travel requests by Darryl Willie, the board’s immediate past chair, who was recently named to the executive committee of the Council of the Great City Schools. It’s a networking organization that “brings together 78 of the nation’s largest urban public school systems in a coalition dedicated to the improvement of education for children in the inner cities.” Willie said he’ll need to travel to three of its meetings over the next eight months.

Superintendent Christopher Bernier is also active in the Council of the Great City Schools, among other professional organizations, as required by his contract. At the meeting Tuesday, Bernier said he regularly converses with other superintendents in the nonprofit.

And though travel requests like Willie’s are usually unanimously approved without much discussion, Chair Charlotte Joyce said she planned to vote against all of Wille’s travel to fulfill his leadership role and would likely vote against the district’s membership in the organization, too, when the contract comes up for renewal in a few months. 

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The board ultimately voted down two of Willie’s three trips on 1-6 votes. His other trip squeaked by, 4-3, with yeses from Cindy Pearson, Tony Ricardo and Melody Bolduc.

Both the Duval school district and individual school board members belong to a number of professional development organizations, including the Florida School Boards Association, the National Association of School Boards and the Council of the Great City Schools. 

Recently, the contingent of conservative-leaning board members have also become active with School Boards for Academic Excellence, a fledgling national organization run by David Hoyt, who co-founded one of Jacksonville’s largest charter schools: Cornerstone Classical Academy. 

A district spokesperson could not immediately provide a comprehensive list of the district’s memberships and their associated costs.

The previous travel dispute 

The votes against Willie’s travel followed a previous dispute over board travel in December, when Willie voted against the three new members’ travel to a conference sponsored by School Boards for Academic Excellence, the group whose mission is “to restore academic excellence and parental rights in the American education system.” 

Joyce and April Carney had been unanimously approved to attend already. Willie objected to the three additional members attending because, he said, precedent was for just one or two members to attend professional development events and report back. 

Joyce, who was advocating for the five-member trip, had recently traveled in October with former board member Warren Jones to a conference of the Council of the Great City Schools. 

“Let’s just face it — there are school board members that are left-leaning, and there are school board members that are conservative, right-leaning — and you get them all together, and you really do, you have to have an open mind, but you listen,” Joyce said in December. “I think listening to somebody that doesn’t necessarily agree with you on every point is very helpful, and it makes us all better.” 

The board approved the three additional members’ attendance on a 4-3 vote. Reginald Blount, who voted against his own travel, was among those who nonetheless attended the conference. 

With the addition of three new members who had the backing of various GOP endorsers, Duval County’s board is now among the state’s most unapologetically conservative school boards. Though Florida’s school boards are officially nonpartisan entities, Duval’s now has a clear conservative majority: 5-2 or 6-1, depending on how you classify Pearson. She’s a registered Republican who narrowly fought off a challenge by former Duval Moms for Liberty Chair Becky Nathanson to retain her seat last year. 

Last week, the board picked up the conversation about travel where they’d left off in December. 

Joyce called the Council of the Great City Schools conferences she’s attended “very, very, very partisan-leaning on one side.” She noted that at the October event, a keynote speaker was former NBC political analyst Chuck Todd, whom she criticized for giving a speech she perceived as liberal-leaning. Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman known as a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, had addressed school board members at the event the year prior.

“I believe that when you had discussed your concerns around [School Boards for Academic Excellence], you talked about partisanship,” Joyce said to Willie. “Council of [the] Great City Schools, sometimes for me as a conservative board member, is very hard to listen to.”