Duval County’s School Board approved changing school district policies Tuesday night to tighten protections against sexual misconduct or child abuse involving district employees.
But school officials have been talking about controlling misconduct for more than a year, and another Douglas Anderson School of the Arts teacher was just reassigned last week as the district investigates claims of “inappropriate communication” with a student two school years ago.
The scattered, incremental way information about misconduct claims trickles out can make it harder to keep each new piece of information in perspective.
For people trying to keep track, here are some key points about the school district’s misconduct worries.
Lots of questions: Police want to ask 140 Douglas Anderson School of the Arts students about campus misconduct
What made teacher misconduct a big worry in Duval schools?
The March 2023 arrest of Jeffrey Clayton, a teacher at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, triggered a flood of complaints from parents, students and alumni that earlier reports about teachers were ignored.
Clayton was sentenced in June to 10 years in prison for breaking a state law against teachers having sexual conduct with students or seeking or engaging in romantic relationships. Several other Douglas Anderson teachers were pulled from classroom duties over misconduct claims and other complaints surfaced, some dating back years.
In June, then-Superintendent Dana Kriznar wrote to Douglas Anderson families that “I am deeply sorry that we did not better protect our students from the actions of these predators.”
How much does this happen?
It’s definitely not just an issue at Douglas Anderson, but it’s hard to be sure how often this happens in other schools.
When Clayton was sentenced, his attorney filed a memo to the judge listing 22 similar cases around the state. Those included four since 2018 involving former teachers at First Coast and Ribault high schools, Landon Middle School and Duval Charter School at Mandarin as well as a fifth involving a former teacher at a private school in Jacksonville, New Beginnings Christian Academy. The list also included three former St. Johns County public school teachers.
Who keeps track of these problems?
A state rule called the School Environmental Safety Incident Reporting system (SESIR) requires school districts to tell the Florida Department of Education about instances of dozens of kinds of teacher conduct problems, including sexual offenses.
But the state agency said it hadn’t received anything about Clayton until after his arrest, despite the school district having investigated other complaints about his behavior years earlier.
Separately, in January the state sent the school district an inspector general’s report that said in 2023 the district had filed reports about 73 other conduct issues — involving employees besides Clayton — that should have been reported as much as two years earlier.
Who’s held accountable for misconduct?
Besides teachers who are locked up for committing crimes, educators can also lose state teaching licenses in some cases, but only after complaints have been confirmed and reported to the state.
A school district supervisor who handled teacher conduct cases was pulled off his job in 2023 when news about unreported cases surfaced, but he retired before the district completed a review of his actions.
A state grand jury report unsealed in 2022 accused a former Duval County Schools Police Department chief of underreporting on-campus crimes that are also reported under SESIR, but didn’t bring any criminal charges involving those claims, which mostly involved crimes by students or other non-teachers.
Both the SESIR reporting problems and the grand jury report were mentioned in School Board meetings in the spring of 2023 when then-Superintendent Diana Greene announced she had negotiated her retirement. She was replaced by Kriznar, who held the job until Superintendent Christopher Bernier started in two months ago.
What’s been done to make students safer?
Before Greene retired, lawyers for the school district hired an outside law firm to review the district’s handling of complaints about school employee conduct. That review dragged out with little transparency for more than a year, with School Board Chair Darryl Willie saying during an April meeting that board members had been advised by attorneys not to discuss review findings publicly due to pending litigation. In July, the School Board approved $1.45 million in payments to settle three legal complaints about teacher misconduct at Douglas Anderson.
Days before Bernier was sworn into office, Kriznar rolled out a 20-point plan to improve safeguards that included mandating removing school employees from contact with children after any arrest or allegation involving child abuse or “bodily harm” to another person of any age or drug use or sexual misconduct. Other parts of the plan would require school employees who knew of evidence of misconduct or student complaints of that to the district’s Office of Professional Standards or to the Florida Department of Children and Families, or face consequences as severe as firing.
What did the School Board vote on Tuesday?
Kriznar’s plan gave the superintendent’s office, now in Bernier’s hands, deadlines in October and November to advance complete text for some policy changes to improve student protection.
The board voted Tuesday to approve changes to its policy manual for professional ethics and for removal of employees for misconduct.
Although presented by Bernier at Tuesday’s meeting, the revision “was well under way upon my arrival,” said the superintendent, who has been promoting a public awareness effort labeled “Know the Line” to reinforce boundaries the school district is setting for contact bertween teachers and students.
Examples of those limits are rules barring teachers or other school employes contacting students by phone, text or social meda; discouraging physical contact beyond a handshake, high-five or fist bump; and encouraging school employees to avoid meeting alone with students except in situations like counseling when privacy may be needed.
The school district outlines its boundaries and offers a link for reporting concerns about teacher misconduct on a new webpage, duvalschools.org/knowtheline.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: What did Duval School Board just do to prevent teacher misconduct?
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