With the school year starting August 10 in Jacksonville, the man running Duval County Public Schools is emphasizing effort to help the school district’s academic gains outweigh its challenges.
“We know our families have choices” on where to enroll their kids, Superintendent Christopher Bernier told reporters July 28.
“… While we will not know exactly where our enrollment numbers are until the first week of school, we do know that our focus has to be on outworking the alternative options every day.”
Less than a month after the district earned a second state-issued “A” grade after decades of missing the mark, Bernier touted DCPS as offering “a better academic product; a better overall student experience that parents and students can count on…”
Christopher Bernier: 5 things to know about the Duval County Schools superintendent
"Our teachers are some of the world's best," Bernier said during a July 29 interview, "and that's being reflected in the results that we're receiving from the state."
The district has also spent years expanding its career-training options in fields from cybersecurity to building trades and veterinary assistant training. That was part of the pitch when Bernier said that "no matter where our children are, they will attend, be successful and be prepared for their future."
But the student experience is about more than coursework, of course.
From school buses to student safety, these are some subjects where the district has been working to improve before the first bell rings.
Bus service
To keep questions or complaints to the school district's transportation office from being lost or needlessly delayed, the school district launched a call-handling system in March, a slow season for a bus service that transports about 48,000 students. The start of the school year will be the first major workout for the phone system, which tells callers how many people are ahead of them and an estimate on the hold-time. The district's online Focus system is used to register students for bus service.
Contracted bus operators already tracked their buses and driver locations, but the school district had added its own GPS trackers for each bus, so district management will also be able to check for themselves.
"Customer service matters," Bernier told reporters, hitting a theme that's being emphasized throughout the school system. "... Every interaction a family has with our schools shapes how they'll view Duval County Public Schools."
Buses are also outfitted with AI-enhanced camera systems the district installed in the springtime to document motorists who illegally pass school buses stopped for children getting on or off.
Weapons checks
The district has been moving ahead with plans to install metal detectors at 30 elementary schools during the 2026-27 year, expanding use of a system the district already uses at middle schools. Three guns were recovered at elementary schools over the prior year, but none at middle schools, Duval County School Police Chief Jackson Short told reporters in June.
The detectors will be installed gradually over the year, with staff getting training and the district circulating videos telling families what to expect. A different system is used in high schools. Weapon-spotting technology should be in all schools within three years.
Teacher vacancies
Large teacher shortages that dogged earlier superintendents are mostly gone, with about 125 people in a hiring pipeline to fill about 200 vacancies that remained on July 29. Retention rates for existing teachers from one school year to the next rose from 87% in 2024-25 to 91% last year.
Bernier said voters’ approval in 2022 of an extra property tax millage that funds pay raises averaging $8,600 yearly for more seasoned teachers has made it easier to recruit and keep good people.
“When we retain experienced educators, students benefit. When classrooms are staffed by qualified educators, students benefit,” he said, but added that he won’t be telling people how to vote in a November referendum on whether to extend that millage through 2030. State law bars school employees from advocating on that subject, although Bernier did say that “our entire community benefits when the connection between the investment in our teachers and student success is clear.”
School employee misconduct
Employee misconduct reemerged as a district management worry after three arrests in May and June rekindled a years-old focus on improper relationships between district employees and students under their authority.
"We must always work to protect our students," Bernier told reporters after saying the district must "make sure that mandatory reporting is never a question in anyone’s mind. … if someone says ‘I believe my child has been abused,’ your next action is to pick up and call 1-800-96ABUSE or to log into the DCF hotline."
The school district paid at least $1.8 million in 2024 and 2025 to settle legal claims involving misconduct by former Douglas Anderson Schol of the Arts teacher Jeffrey Clayton, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for engaging in a romantic relationship with a 16-year-old student. That crime happened before Bernier was hired by the school district two years ago and the School Board changed its policies on communication between employees and students in September 2024 to forbid interaction over personal accounts and restrict contact with students.
Despite those changes, arrest reports claimed Twin Lakes Academy Middle School security guard Jon Kee had a conversation on his cell phone that was part of the basis for him being charged in May with soliciting or engaging in lewd conduct with a student, a second-degree felony. Baldwin Middle-Senior High teacher James Mulvey was charged the same month with seeking a “romantic, although not physical” relationship with a student, sometimes through district email accounts, and Baldwin Principal Michael Townsend was charged with failure to report child abuse because, police said, he reported knowing of the relationship for weeks.
“Make sure that mandatory reporting is never a question in anyone’s mind. … If someone says ‘I believe my child has been abused,’ your next action is to pick up [a phone] and call 1-800-96ABUSE or to log into the DCF hotline,” Bernier said. “We must always work to protect our students.”
Bernier said the district has been diligent about training employees on its rules, summarized under the title Know the Line, and that "we consistently revise it" to be more effective as new people are hired.
"We want people to understand two things. We want them to understand what a professional relationship is and wat it isn't; and the responsibility of an individual, if you see a colleague or another individual who's involved with the school system behaving inappropriately, you have a responsibility to report it," Bernier said. "... I think the other part of Know the Line is how does the superintendent respond. And the superintendent responds in a way that if you have violated student safety and you have violated state law, then you don't have a reason to stay employed with us."
School kitchen inspections
Bernier said he and district staff are also talking with Jacksonville's Office of Inspector General about a July 22 IG report that said the district approved school kitchen renovations “without requesting, issuing or verifying” building permits that state law requires.
"The safety of our students is always important and it doesn't matter whether that's in a classroom or a kitchen," Bernier said, adding that "we will continue to work the process with the auditor general for safety inspections of our kitchens. ... We will continue to work with our safety engineers as well as our electrical engineers and other people to ensure that our kitchens are installed appropriately with the right permitting and ... in a way that makes it safe for all children."
Janitor changes
The district is also planning to experiment this year with changes to its janitorial service, now provided by contractor HES Facilities Management. During the coming year, the district plans to develop a small cleaning crew employed directly by the district to handle janitors' work at a few schools and inside the school district headquarters. The district plans to use that pilot project as a real-world test to weigh the costs and benefits of making cleaning services a job for district employees rather than one that's hired out.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Duval superintendent's back-to-school plan to keep kids in his classes
