About that grand jury report and those fifty late reports to the state.

Long before Greene showed up, the district had a problem with underreporting and misreporting crimes, and where that is definitely on the district, it is on the state too. You see. The state would factor in crimes and referrals into school grades, and when school grades determine bonuses, promotions, and even continued employment, sometimes people would do squirrely things, and that’s not me justifying it; that’s me explaining it.    

So Greene’s problem isn’t that this started under her; it's she did nothing to stop it until got caught, but let’s talk about the grand jury that caught her.

The DeSantis administration needs enemies and victims, and it isn’t above weaponizing the courts to punish its perceived enemies, but the really crazy thing is the grand jury report came out in December 2020, and nobody cared.

 https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/education/2020/12/11/duval-schools-police-department-lambasted-grand-jury-florida-safety-report/3893537001/

Now I cared and covered it a few times, but these far-right ideologues who are pointing to it as a reason for Greene to go sure as heck didn't. Some people might say it was unsealed last August, but even that was then, it was 9 months before it was brought up again, and I am not sure what that means because there doesn’t appear to be any new information.  

 

I have no doubt Greene continued Duval’s long history of juking the numbers; I don’t, but let's not pretend for a second a weaponized three-plus-year-old grand jury report played any serious role in where she and the district now find themselves.  

Now about those fifty unreported cases. At the school board meetings yesterday, the right made it sound like DCPS had fifty pedophiles stalking the halls of DCPS schools, and that’s just dumb. An investigation will make things clearer, but it’s my bet most if not all, were all administrative (tardies, this or that) or minor victimless crimes.

I am not saying it’s good that they went unreported if they were supposed to be reported, they should have, but they most likely serious offenses like the Moms for Fascist members and Insurrection Barbie April Carey pretended they were; there is so little there-there, we might as well say there is none. The media monitors arrests, and if a teacher were arrested for something serious, it would have made the news.-

DCPS has fourteen thousand employees; fifty over three years is a tiny drop in a big bucket.

So yes, it’s kind of a thing, but in the scale of all the other things, it’s not really.

Then I just want to say I think Greene leaving is good for the district. It is impossible to tell where she begins, and DeSantis ends because she has been a loyal foot-soldier of his. I just can’t stand the hypocrisy of the people on the right who wanted to force her out, pretending they care about the safety of students three years after the report came out and conflating the mundane into something nefarious.