DCPS superintendent feels positive in State of Schools address

Every school. Every classroom. Every student. Every day.

At the State of the Schools address on Friday, Duval County Public School Superintendent Dr. Diana Greene said she plans to focus on these four things moving forward to create the best educational experience for children moving forward.

Action News Jax reporter Courtney Cole attended the "State of the Schools."

Here are some of the main takeaways:

Greene told the room full of community stakeholders the Duval County Public School system was deemed the No. 1 Large Urban School District in the nation, according to The National Assessment of Educational Progress.

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“The new NAEP results confirm that Duval County is one of the highest performing big-city school districts in the nation. The public should be encouraged by the progress their schools have made and hopeful for a very bright future,” said Michael Casserly, Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools.

NAEP is a congressionally mandated project, administered by the National Center of Statistics within the U.S. Department of Education and Institute of Education Sciences.

It’s also the only assessment that measures what U.S. students know and can do in various subjects across the nation.

There were also major wins for African-American and Hispanic students when it comes to math and reading. “Our students are moving forward, our students are learning,” Greene said.

The school district also has the highest graduation rate it’s ever had at 80.8%. While Greene may have a lot to be proud of Lionel Smith, a grandparent of two DCPS students, told Action News Jax he still thinks there's one thing missing from the curriculum: "More history… Black history, for example. I don't think they get enough of that. I'm from Panama originally. A lot of kids don't even know where the Panama Canal is. They've never been taught that."

Smith also told Action News Jax after his granddaughter’s experience, he’d like to see the school district do more to discipline the kids.

“Regardless of the high grades she was getting, they didn't have control of the behavior of the students, and (she) caused a lot of problems,” Smith said.

This falls in line with the total number of suspensions for DCPS students, which Greene says was at about 30,000 for the 2015-2016 school year. Greene says keeping kids from getting referrals and suspensions isn't just about discipline, but mental health as well.

She said she plans to invest in and implement programs that will address those issues as well. Just two weeks after the deadly shooting after a Raines High School football game, parents from all over the Duval County School District want to see more done to keep the school environment safe.

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For Amanda West, who has two children that attend Windy Hill Elementary School, that means hiring more school officers.

“Instead of just that one officer that's here everyday when they volunteer, I think they should have at least one more... or maybe three,” West said.

Greene says in response to the shooting at Raines, they're looking to get feedback from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office to see what measures can be taken to improve safety at all schools.

“The things we're working on is to really look at each campus, focusing on things like cameras… do we need more lighting in (the) parking lot area… those kinds of things.”

In terms of when we'll see all 107 school safety assistants at all elementary schools, Green said she plans to have them all in place by the end of the school year, saying, “Well, we actually just graduated another class (of safety assistants) and so we are in double-digit numbers right now with school safety assistants."

Cox Media Group