Duval County canvassing board finishes counting school name-change votes
Results could be announced late Wednesday, early Thursday
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DCPS Canvassing Board meets to scrutinize school name change ballots on May 19, 2021. (Copyright 2021 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved.)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Duval County Public Schools’ Renaming Canvassing Board counted votes Wednesday taken over the last several weeks from stakeholders at nine Jacksonville schools. The board confirmed provisional ballots and judged eligibility questions on polling whether to rename nine schools in the district.
By mid-afternoon, all the votes were counted. The results are expected to be released either late Wednesday or early Thursday.
Online dashboard will allow residents to track Duval school’s half-cent tax revenue
More than $6.6M generated from recently approves surtax measure
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Screenshot: DCPS Half-Cent Sales Tax Oversight Dashboard as of April 28, 2021. (Copyright 2021 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved.)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Revenue generated from a half-cent sales tax, which was approved by Duval County voters in November, has started rolling in and taxpayers will soon be able to track exactly how the money is being used.
As of April 14, the tax had generated $6,689,011, of which $5,766,469 went to DCPS and $922,542 is headed for charter schools, according to the district’s website.
Duval County Public Schools collected almost $7 million in its first month of half-cent sales tax revenue, Superintendent Diana Greene said.
Greene said the school district received its first installment $6,689,011 from sales tax revenue at the end of March. A district spokesman said they expect to see February s installment soon. Initial projections from the school district anticipated between $6.6 and $8 million per month over the course of the 15-year tax.
Of that $6,689,011 collected, $922,541.99 will go to charter schools within the district. New state legislature entitles charter schools to sales tax revenue on a per-student basis. We are neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic about the first collections in January, Spokesman Tracy Pierce said. This is a 15-year funding program being launched in a pandemic impacted economy. January is just the first data point. We are excited to be moving forward with the building plan as presented to the voters.
Douglas Anderson school cancels race-separated student diversity meetings after outcry
Douglas Anderson administrators canceled the segregated meetings after complaints from students and parents. DCPS officials said they were equally concerned. Author: Florida Times-Union, Emily Bloch Published: 9:48 AM EST March 4, 2021 Updated: 9:48 AM EST March 4, 2021
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. A school meeting that was supposed to focus on diversity and inclusion was billed as segregated, separating students of color from their white peers. It drew so much criticism in a matter of hours that administrators were forced to cancel.
It all started Tuesday evening when Douglas Anderson School of the Arts Principal Melanie Hammer sent an email to the school s families with the subject line: Student Cultural Meetings.
Will Duval County half-cent sales tax money be used to rename schools?
District official explains funding process for potential school renaming
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Many opponents of the renaming effort, which later expanded to include nine schools, have argued it’s a waste of public money, with some of them under the impression that revenue from the recently passed Duval County half-cent sales tax would fund the project.
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Duval County Public Schools director of communication Tracy Pierce told News4Jax that those funds collected from the half-cent sales tax would only be used for school renaming in a very limited and specific set of circumstances.