Jacksonville Civic Council wants input on school superintendent search

Ed Burr Jacksonville Civic Council

The Duval County School District is searching for a new superintendent — and the Jacksonville Civic Council wants to be dealt in.

“The quality of Duval County’s K-12 public education system is absolutely fundamental to our region’s economic vitality, directly impacting our workforce and business recruitment as well as local colleges and universities. It is also crucial to our quality of life, which depends upon a thriving economic engine to provide jobs and opportunity for local residents,” said a Tuesday letter to School Board Chairwoman Paula Wright from Civic Council Chairman Ed Burr.

“That means the choice of an executive to lead the system should be undertaken with the utmost care and stakeholder involvement,” Burr added.

“Our members are keenly interested in the well-being of our city; and all concur that the hiring of a new Superintendent is one of the most important decisions to be made here in the near future,” said Burr. “We offer our service with no agenda other than to support the School Board in identifying and hiring the most highly-qualified candidate possible and continuing the progress we have seen in recent years.”

The Civic Council press release notes that they would be fine with deferring a decision until after the 2018 elections, which would remove certain long-sitting members from the board by dint of term limits.

Duval has had an acting superintendent, Dr. Patricia Willis, for months. Nikolai Vitti, a darling of Jacksonville’s political establishment, went to Detroit in the spring.

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has written for FloridaPolitics.com since 2014. He is based in Northeast Florida. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski


One comment

  • Frankie M.

    December 12, 2017 at 7:55 pm

    Those high falutin windbags need to stay in their lanes & stick to buying school board seats instead of trying to lure the next vitti to DUVALLLLLLLL.

Comments are closed.


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