One of Jacksonville’s greatest strengths, its size, is also a bit of a liability to the school system. Since there are so many neighborhoods and they are spread all out that means we have to have more schools than cities with a similar population.
When the Education Resources consultant recommended the closing of schools they compared us to Charlotte but what they failed to take into account was Jacksonville is far larger than Charlotte. The report also uses the word could, not will, when it comes to savings and nowhere in the report does it mention the increased cost of bussing either.
Two things, hundreds if not thousands of kids have left district 5, if we make the schools in district 5, safe and rigorous, I believe the kids will return and that will solve the problem of underutilization. Furthermore I do believe the district staff has become bloated both in salary and enumeration and that is a prime place to find savings and one I would like to explore before closing schools was brought up.
In these tight financial times we must keep all our options on the table but we can’t make decisions based on maybes and improving the schools so the problem solves itself is what I believe is the best option.
Chris Guerrieri
Chris I disagree with this as I worked in Elementary most of career before I resigned and you have some schools that have as little as 250-300 students. That is not cost efficient.
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