As Duval School Board meets over bad teachers, is Superintendent Diana Greene's job safe?

Days before a Wednesday meeting about a legal review of teacher misconduct at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, a crowd rallied to protect the job of Superintendent Diana Greene.

Should the two subjects have anything to do with each other, anyway?

The question holds extra meaning after repeated friction between Duval County schools and state education administrators ultimately accountable to Gov. Ron DeSantis and appointees his office approves.

Greene’s employment isn’t on the School Board’s Wednesday 1 p.m. meeting agenda.

But a year of turnover among Florida superintendents has made it easier for school-watchers to appreciate political risks to the woman overseeing Duval County’s system of 129,000 students and 7,354 teachers.

“Greene has endured constant scrutiny by state officials looking for anything to get rid of her just like so many others that don’t bend to their will,” former School Board member Elizabeth Andersen wrote on Twitter last week. Nine of the 29 Florida superintendents who, like Greene, were appointed instead of elected have resigned or been replaced since November, the Treasure Coast Newspapers reported.

Greene “has tried to accommodate them,” Andersen tweeted about state officials, “but it was only a matter of time before they found a way to force her out.”

A Democratic lawmaker blamed partisan politics for putting Greene’s job future in doubt.

“I fully believe this is a partisan witch hunt with a Republican school board and Republican-led Department of Education to target one of the last stronghold Democratic superintendents in the state,” state Sen. Tracie Davis, D-Jacksonville, said in a statement emailed to reporters.

But School Board Chair Kelly Coker talked about the approaching meeting as simply a step toward ensuring student safety.

“As a board, we are committed to hiring third-party counsel to complete an independent investigation of the events that led to the recent arrest of Jeffrey Clayton,” Coker said in an email routed through a school district spokesman.

“The Douglas Anderson community and our community-at-large deserve our commitment to and focus on ensuring the safety and well-being of the students that attend Duval County Public Schools. Our meeting on Wednesday will move us closer to that goal,” Coker wrote.

Clayton, a 65-year-old music teacher with a long history of coaching singers, was charged last month with lewd conduct with a student, a felony.

That jolt was compounded by unrelated reviews of other faculty and the disclosure last week of earlier complaints involving Clayton, most recently in 2021.

Coker said she was “appalled to know that district leadership was aware” of earlier complaints and determined to see that students were protected.

“We are the officials entrusted by parents, voters, and taxpayers to take care of children, and I have every confidence that this board will take the actions it needs to take to accomplish that goal,” Coker said last week.

Necessary or not, the roughly 50 people who rallied Monday evening outside the school district headquarters on Prudential Drive wanted to ensure that Greene was protected too.

“Dr. Greene has done a fantastic job,” Tony Hansberry, presiding elder in a First Coast AME Church district, told the group. “…For our community, Dr. Greene has stood. For all of us, Dr. Greene has stood. We demand that they leave Dr. Greene alone.”

Praising Greene, whose teaching career started 38 years ago at Baldwin's Mamie Agnes Jones Elementary School, would have seemed redundant not long ago, particularly after she was named the 2021 Florida superintendent of the year by her peers. Graduation rates have risen since her selection as superintendent in 2018 while state-issued district grades for overall performance have remained Bs each year of her tenure.

Twice in that tenure, Greene has worked with advocates around Northeast Florida to make the case for tax referenda that are helping pay for new construction or extensive upgrades to decayed school buildings, as well as raising property tax revenue earmarked largely for improving teacher pay.

Greene has been surrounded by controversy, too, with district employees catching complaints from both sides after the School Board adopted a 2021 pandemic masking policy that backers said was needlessly late and that critics said infringed on parental rights.

Parents who opposed the policy filed a lawsuit that’s still pending in federal court.

Following a statewide grand jury’s criticism of the way a former school district police chief handled reports of on-campus crime, there was talk this week that the superintendent might choose retirement rather than drawn-out disputes about how the school system handled past complaints at Douglas Anderson.

Tuesday afternoon, Coker issued another statement raising new issues to cover Wednesday:

“I am deeply troubled to learn the district has only recently sent upwards of 50 investigative cases involving educators in Duval County Public Schools to the Office of Professional Practices for the Florida Department of Education,” Coker said. “Some of these cases date back to as early as 2020.”

Timely reporting of teacher violations “is crucial in how we safeguard students. The timeline for reporting is also clearly outlined in state statute,” the statement continued.

“…The children of Duval County deserve better, and as a Board, we want to assure our community that the security and safety of their children in our schools will always be our number one priority.”

A little later, Greene issued remarks that she “was surprised and angered to learn from [state Education] Commissioner [Manny] Diaz that our office of professional standards apparently was in possession of 50 delinquent case files, which they recently sent to the state office of professional practices.”

An audit report from January had checked district procedures for reporting employees’ ethical conduct and said nothing about undelivered records, so “until receiving the commissioner’s letter, I had no indication that we were out of compliance with any file,” Greene wrote.

While agreeing problems have come out that need correction, the superintendent’s defenders say Greene, who is already scheduled to retire in 2025 from her $300,000-a-year post, shouldn’t be pushed out prematurely.

In the crowd outside the school district offices Monday, parent Katie Hathaway held signs as she talked about Greene, who she became a fan of after approaching Greene for a signature on petition for the anti-gun violence group Moms Demand Action.

Hathaway said Greene shouldn’t be removed casually.

“Letting her go will not solve the problem,” Hathaway said. “It will only create another victim.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Once on top, what's ahead for Duval schools superintendent Diana Greene?