We need to wipe the slate clean at the Duval County school board

W.C. gentry after previously saying he wouldn’t run again on First Coast Connect has apparently changed his mind and will seek reelection.

Betty Burney also told the Times Union she wills seek a third term on the school board and where Martha Barret couldn’t be reached she has already filed for a forth term. Do we really need 12 years of Burney and 16 of Barret?

It really baffles me to think what they think they have done to deserve even one more day o the school board. Are the suffering from some form of cognitive dissonance or some pathological narcissism?

They along with the superintendent have run the district into the ground and here they are asking for four more years.

Here is a brief list of their accomplishments over just the last year.

This time last year we were talking about, a fifty thousand dollar speaker, a beach retreat and Duval Partners, the hand picked EMO that came and went.

Towards the end of summer, the district gave away control of four schools and two million dollars to Education Directions despite the fact they were granted an extra year to come up with solutions.

The fall saw the school board allow the KIPP school to expand despite the fact in it’s first year it was the worse performing school in Northeast Florida, a contract with Teach for America to bring novice teachers to our inner city schools at 2,400 dollars a pop when local teachers and college of ed grads can’t find jobs and a vote to spend 300 thousand dollars on additional public relations positions.

In December we got some good news. Because of a scoring change many of our schools grades went up, unfortunately the district is now in a tizzy because a new new scoring change that will cause some of our schools grades to go down. Nobody taught the superintendent that you can’t have cake and eat it too.

In January the state ranked our district 50th out of 67 and pointed out that we have 8 of the bottom 25 high schools in the state, including number 404.

Then a few weeks ago the federal government said our real graduation rate was 63% for all our kids and just over 54% for our African American kids. All the states are being required to switch to their more realistic formula next year.

This brings us to Schools of the Future. Money wasted, kids set back, equipment missing and the district with yet another “who me???” look on it’s face because of how they lost track of Schools of the Future.

Lets then add grade reccover, a lack of discipline and terrible teacher morale, despite these things have been going on for quite some time to the list.

What makes them think thy should run again? No really, please tell me.