Duval School Board OK's negotiating Baymeadows move; Sept. 17 workshop set to talk details

By Steve Patterson 

Duval County’s School Board will meet Sept. 17 to talk more about moving from downtown to Baymeadows after authorizing its superintendent Sept. 2 to negotiate contract terms for the shift.

The board’s 6-to-1 votes set the table for final decisions Oct. 7 on whether to sign agreements selling the school district’s headquarters on the Southbank riverfront for $20 million and buying a replacement 10 miles to the southeast for $14 million.

Despite the lopsided initial votes, several members expressed doubts about either the sale or the purchase representing the best deals possible.

“I am concerned that the move to Baymeadows … may be something that a future board will look back on and say ‘What were they thinking?’’ member Cindy Pearson said at a meeting where several members of the public criticized the idea of moving administrative offices to a suburban office park.

Pearson voted for letting Superintendent Christopher Bernier negotiate contract terms but said she will “most likely vote no” on the final move unless her concerns are addressed well by information at the Sept. 17 workshop, which is reserved for talk about the two real estate deals.

Local government offices have routinely operated from Jacksonville’s core since the city and county governments consolidated in 1968.

Bernier stressed that final decisions on both selling the existing building and buying a replacement rest with the board.

The school district has occupied its current headquarters at 1701 Prudential Drive since 1981. Critics have argued that moving to the planned replacement at 8928 Prominence Parkway, near Baymeadows Road and Interstate 95, would discourage public involvement with the district, particularly for people without reliable cars.

The purchase of the new site controlled by Dream Finders Homes LLC was targeted to close at the end of 2025 while the sale of the Southbank building was tentatively scheduled to close in August 2026, the board was told Aug. 19.

If the current headquarters is sold, School Board meetings would move to the Schultz Center for Teaching and Leadership, 4019 Boulevard Center Drive, about three miles east of downtown off Beach Boulevard. The same address already houses the district’s parent resource center, which Bernier has said would be the key place families might need to contact with issues that can't be handled at individual schools.

While that address is closer to the city’s center, Yasmina White, an advocate on parental issues, told the board she had visited the Schultz Center by bus coming from Arlington and that the trip had taken four hours and would be especially difficult with children.

Jacksonville’s NAACP branch had previously argued against the move to Baymeadows, writing on Facebook that “shifting the administrative hub away from downtown erects barriers to civic participation, further disenfranchising constituents who feel unheard.”

On both the headquarters sale and the new site, board member Darryl Willie cast the only “no” votes, saying “we need to make sure we’re not closing off part of the community.” Willie, who represents a large area of Northside and Westside neighborhoods, said “I just do not think my constituents will have access to this.”

Bernier told Willie the school district’s representatives “looked hard, high and low, to find somewhere to buy in the downtown area,” but hadn’t found a suitable alternative.

Member Reginald Blount, who was elected last year, restated concerns he’d raised before that the $20 million offer from the nonprofit operating the Fleet Landing retirement community was too low for riverfront land in an improving area. Members with more time in office, however, told him that the price was the best they had heard yet from a years-long search for buyers.

Noting that residents who years ago called for the school district to move off the riverfront argued the land could generate tax revenue after being redeveloped, Pearson pointed out that Feet Landing’s ownership is nonprofit, and might therefore be exempt from paying property taxes, undercutting a key rationale for moving.

However the school district said in a Sept. 1 online statement that maintaining the Southbank headquarters costs more than $500,000 each year and that the district could lower its expenses and free up money for work at schools.

Between 400 and 500 people work around the Southbank property now, although some of those also split their time between Prudential Drive and other school properties. The number of school district employees moving to Baymeadows “has not been finalized,” said the district’s Sept. 1 message.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Why has Duval School Board set a Sept. 17 workshop on moving its HQ?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/duval-school-board-votes-tonight-164912217.html