Another failure in leadership
The renaming of our schools is another failure of district leadership.
For ten months, the process to change six of our schools named after confederate era figures has been going on. TEN MONTHS.
Last June, after the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbury, and Breonna Taylor, the nation had a reawakening of interests in civil rights, and protests erupted all over the nation, not just because of the deaths but because of generational and systematic racism too. Duval County Public schools decided to join in, just in their own slow, disorganized, and painfully awkward way.
I spoke at the first meeting where the name changes were proposed by Board Member Warren Jones. The gist of my speech was we couldn’t have schools named after people who never did anything questionable because we could never find anyone, but we could have schools that weren’t named after slavers, racists, and traitors. That and sometimes we revere historical figures despite their flaws, see our founding fathers, but confederates were revered because of their flaws.
This was the beginning of June, and I was optimistic that those schools would open in the fall with new names, but that has been far from the case.
After months of little or no action, it became obvious that the district did not want to do anything until after the vote on CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: Another failure in leadership