Duval Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals leaving

[Jaxson]

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-02-24/story/duval-superintendent-ed-pratt-dannals-leaving

[BridgeTroll]

Way overdue... we also now know there is 110-120 million mysteriously available...

This action came on the same day the Times-Union reported the school system has had about $100 million in its reserve fund for the past several years while the district made dramatic cuts to jobs, sports programs and magnet school transportation.

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-02-24/story/duval-superintendent-ed-pratt-dannals-leaving#ixzz1nQTJ1a8C

[Jaxson]

The timing of the contract non-renewal announcement also comes at a time when the school system is smarting from its overage program's ills hitting the news.  How could the superintendent not know about a school's principal not abiding by state and county mandates?  Instead of making sure that students who are too old for their grade level are meeting the standards, this program was allowed to waste taxpayer money and have nothing to show for it.  This is something that has been proven to work in cities like Chicago, but we allowed this to fail our students and our community.  I wonder how much the overage program issue factored into such a swift show of no-confidence in Mr. Pratt-Dannals.

[ONESTOP THRIFTSHOP]

What the school board needs to do is Hire a Local Person instead of going Nationally for a person to fill the superintendent's position.
A local person would know what is going on here in Jacksonville, Duval County Schools. Then the local person can address the issues correctly.
Like
Number 1:  Hire more teachers and teachers aides. Due to they could do a one on one help with each student.
Number 2:  Make classes smaller. This way the students would be more interested in staying in school to get the education. 
Number 3:   Cut back on the administration in the school board building and put them in the class room to help
                    with the students that needs help.
Number 4:   Safety is important to the students and staff.  Hire more security people to monitor the halls.
Number 5:  Give the students an opportunity to suggest differnt ideas to better there eduction  instead of the
                   basic and required subjects needed to graduate with.

[Dog Walker]

Onestop,  Ed Pratt-Dannels has been in the Duval County school system for 36 years.  He is a local as it gets.

The other things you suggest would require a substantial increase in the property taxes paid for education.  The opposite has been happening for years.  We have been lowering our property taxes and now the value of property has declined and further reduced the money available for education.

Mr. Pratt-Dannels told me that he had to spend the first two years as Superintendent eliminating the programs he had spent the previous ten years putting in place as the Director of Curriculum.

[Jaxson]

The whole point of an appointed superintendent is so that the school district can choose from a large pool of qualified candidates.  Even if a nationwide search seems out of the question, I would still think that recruiting someone from the Southeastern United States would help us draw a talented pool. 
Besides, if we want to keep it local, I would recommend that we have an elected superintendent in Duval County, like they have in Clay and St. Johns Counties.

[dougskiles]

Anyone know how the search will be conducted?  If he stays on through the end of the year, we will have at least one new board member (assuming Hazouri doesn't change his mind).  Hopefully the Board will create a search committee that represents a cross section of the population this person would serve.

[Dog Walker]

The whole point of an appointed superintendent is so that the school district can choose from a large pool of qualified candidates.  Even if a nationwide search seems out of the question, I would still think that recruiting someone from the Southeastern United States would help us draw a talented pool. 
Besides, if we want to keep it local, I would recommend that we have an elected superintendent in Duval County, like they have in Clay and St. Johns Counties.

We should never, ever go back to an elected Superintendent.  The reason we have appointed ones now was that our last few elected superintendents were poorly educated, corrupt political hacks who had been popular high school coaches.  Elected superintendents might work OK in small school systems, but ours is not small and takes a deeply knowledgeable professional to manage it.

[dougskiles]

^I couldn't agree more.

[Jaxson]

Exactly my point.  Let's make the most of our appointed superintendent by not limiting the search process to the folks in our own back yard.

[Dog Walker]

Exactly my point.  Let's make the most of our appointed superintendent by not limiting the search process to the folks in our own back yard.

We just need to do a little better job of background checking than we did with the jerk before Pratt-Dannels!

[Kaiser Soze]

Whoever is appointed, I hope he/she brings paddlins' or the switch back to the education system.  Don't do your homework - that's a paddlin.  Smart off to the teacher - that's a paddlin.  Inappropriate dress - that's a paddlin.

[Jaxson]

Exactly my point.  Let's make the most of our appointed superintendent by not limiting the search process to the folks in our own back yard.

We just need to do a little better job of background checking than we did with the jerk before Pratt-Dannels!

AMEN!!!

[mtraininjax]

Save Public School Number 4!

[cityimrov]

Exactly my point.  Let's make the most of our appointed superintendent by not limiting the search process to the folks in our own back yard.

We just need to do a little better job of background checking than we did with the jerk before Pratt-Dannels!

AMEN!!!

I don't know what's happening but Jacksonville (and Florida) is doing something right - in warning other how not to run a school district.  The answer is simple, whatever we do for education - do the complete opposite.  While you may not get the best system in the world, I'm pretty sure it will be better than what Jacksonville has now.  That's my advice to any school district looking at us.

If this city was really serious about education, we would widen the new superintendent search to international and we would pay whatever we have too to bring someone in from Denmark or some place with a highly educated populace.  We would also give them full powers to change whatever they want.