Apparently, no Jacksonville kids can read. Well, some can. Just not those attending Title 1 public schools. The mayor claims it is all by design. I’ll give you three guesses as to why, and the first two don’t count.

The numbers are bad. Embarrassingly bad. Don’t worry though. The mayor and her team of experts have a $25 million plan.

Mayor Donna Deegan released her administration’s “2023 Transition Committee Report.” The report is divided into seven categories each explaining Deegan’s plan to transition Jacksonville from a historically systemically racist, white majority, climate-denying, republican town into a democrat Utopia free from want, “broken promises” and marginalized climate change.

Honestly, the document is nothing more than Soviet-style administrative gobbledygook, but that is another story for another time.

The overarching thesis is to build an “inclusive culture” to encourage collaboration between leaders “who look like Jacksonville.” The Power of DEI will create a city “that works for all of us.”

I am going to focus on the “Public Safety” portion of the document. This section tries really hard to explain why Jacksonville’s kids can’t read, how literacy programs prevent crime and why spending millions of our tax dollars will improve reading rates resulting in a crime-free city all thanks to Marx’s… oops… Donna’s leadership.

Deegan believes the best way to improve reading rates is to bring back former Republican Mayor John Peyton’s Jacksonville Journey, give it a Marxist make-over and call it the “Journey Forward.” Because we all know the best way forward is to journey back to the past. But before we can go backwards to go forward, the committee wants us all to learn about “Jacksonville’s Historical Failure to Teach its Children to Read.”

Honestly, I wasn’t aware of this “historical failure” until my former co-worker became mayor. I attended a Title 1 DCPS elementary, middle and high school and I can read just fine… but then again, I am white so… don’t tell the mayor.

It took a committee of 17 experts including four doctors, meeting “several times” to figure out “The Causes,” of illiteracy, “Identifying the problems” of illiteracy and to determine “recommendations” for the mayor to administer upon us, solving the crisis.

Deegan believes the best way to Journey Forward is to tell the entire city what she thinks of us. And it is not nice. The report is offensive, vindictive and makes absurd accusations against a city she says she loves.

Our city needs to understand these people are trying to manipulate us into believing we are what this paragraph alleges, and we are not. Do not believe it!

This is one paragraph:

“Jacksonville is in a crisis, a crisis of its own making due to its failure to address fundamental community inequities that have persisted for decades and provide the wellspring for generational poverty and illiteracy which stifles development of a modern workforce and denies thousands of our bright and capable young citizens the fundamental right to a quality education.”

Translation: Donna believes Jacksonville’s racist politicians intentionally lied to poor minorities back in 1968 in order to consolidate county and city government. After consolidation, the city allegedly didn’t follow through on whatever was promised 55 years ago, causing generational poverty and illiteracy. All by design. It is our collective fault. And five decades later, it is now our financial responsibility to fix it. Luckily for us, Donna is now in charge. And she has a plan.

The mayor’s document claims a recent report from the Dept. of Education suggests Jacksonville’s reading scores have dropped below Florida’s other major school districts. The DOE report, “it shows a horrific, unacceptable situation existing in our most impoverished communities,” Deegan said.

The data suggests, in more than 40 percent of Duval County’s public schools, less than 30 percent of third-graders are reading on grade level. Even worse, a “substantial percentage” of third graders attending Title 1 schools, “simply cannot read, and have little hope of learning to read under the present circumstances.”

Donna’s group of experts attempt break down the answer to this unscrupulous question: “How does Duval County break out of this decades-long failure to teach our children who reside in certain parts of our town to read, while in other neighborhoods, 90 percent of the children are proficient at the end of third grade?”

The document does not explain how the experts came up with that claim, but remember, the committee met “several times.” So, trust them.

I am curious, those “children who reside in certain parts of our town” who cannot read on grade level, are those the same kids who coincidentally live in neighborhoods 10 degrees hotter than those “other neighborhoods” where 90 perceent of those kids can read? (And by “other neighborhoods,” they mean white ones.)

Our mayor’s administration believes not only has Jacksonville’s systemic racism caused purposeful illiteracy, but also our city’s infrastructure is designed via…you guessed it… so historically black neighborhoods are now somehow 10 degrees hotter than those “other neighborhoods.” Eye on Jacksonville’s Combatting Racist Heat Waves explains: https://eyeonjacksonville.com/combatting-racist-heat-waves/

The committee claims: “Obviously, ‘external factors’ – all tied to poverty” are to blame. “Poor nutrition, lack of healthcare, lack of parental engagement, crime, neighborhood and family trauma and other factors impact the child’s ability to show up at school and be ready to learn.”

The document recognizes lack of parental engagement is to blame, among “other factors”, but quickly moves past any personal responsibility, and moves onto “institutional factors,” meaning government/politicians, “that are the responsibility and under the control of our city government and state agencies which, if operating properly, would teach our children how to read and provide an avenue to address the external factors and engage the entire community around literacy.”

Translation: if we would just give politicians and nonprofits complete control over kid’s nutritional needs and medical care, and allow government to parent the parents (external factors) then Donna’s government (institutional factors) could “operate properly” and would finally be able to teach poor minority children to read just as well as white kids.

The committee also puts the blame on the school district and the teachers the mayor claims to support. “In short, our public education system (which includes charter schools) must improve how it teaches reading in our most economically depressed communities.”

All the mayor’s experts agree, “with the sustained commitment of resources (our taxes) and accountability (enforcement) by the City of Jacksonville and Duval County Public Schools, the Journey Forward (Donna’s plan) can solve the age-old discrepancies (those darn broken promises) and, finally, provide our children the education they deserve.”

First, Deegan will solve “age old discrepancies.” No explanation on what those “age old discrepancies” are exactly, but we know she will for sure solve them. The mayor, fueled by liberal white guilt and $25 million in our money, will become their savior. The mayor will secure re-election by spending our money by the millions and use City Council to enforce her plan, promising in return every single child in town will read as well as all those privileged white kids we keep hearing so much about. I highly doubt it, but let’s find out how she is going to do it, spending $5,370,000 of our money on top of the school district’s $2 billion dollar budget.

The committee blames low Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten attendance, the teacher rating system, a failed assessment system, lack of city-sponsored, after-school literacy programs, lack of city-sponsored summer camps, COVID and unqualified teachers as the reasons so many of Duval’s kids are illiterate.

“The bottom line is the school system has failed our Title 1 students.”

The $2 billion dollar question is why?

Who is being held accountable for failing to do what they owe us as teachers and as public servants?

How much is the city and School Board spending on literacy programs in and out of the classroom? Who is running these programs? What are these groups teaching our underserved students? Why isn’t it working? Does failure matter?

Good news for us, that exact information is out there. The bad news is that exact information is out there, and no one seems to care. Least of all our local media.

That is exactly how they get away with it.

So, to the news directors at our four local news stations, one daily newspaper, two local talk radio stations and countless online publications, this stay-at-home mom will do the job you suck at, for the sake of all those children you and our government have left behind.

Let’s start with funding. There is a crap ton of it. The city, state and federal government have given a sinful amount of cash to our Title 1 schools. The school district has a document on its website breaking down how much is spent on literacy, instructional literacy methods, how to monitor and help students who are falling behind and which literacy nonprofits it pays to teach the kids its certified teachers cannot figure out how to teach.

The district uses a lot of meaningless words to fill up answer boxes in templated documents designed to prove how hard our educators are working inside the classroom. I have learned meaningless words produce positive results in our public education system. And it is all “evidence-based,” so that means it totally works as our abysmal reading scores of our city’s illiterate children suggest.

On the Academic Services page on the school district’s website, there is a link to “Duval County District K-12 Comprehensive Evidence-Based Reading Plan.” There you can find a breakdown of the district’s spending on literacy.

Duval County’s Reading Allocation Budget:

• $7,391,771 and $1,337,264 for charter schools.
• Ten 10 literacy coaches to serve 97 elementary schools.
• Six literacy coaches between 23 middle schools and 19 high schools.

For the record, on Dec. 7, I emailed the Director of Language Arts and Reading, two others in the department as well as the new superintendent several questions regarding literacy coaches and partnered literacy nonprofits. To date, no one has responded.

Out of the $7.4 million dollar budget the district spends:

• $12.000 helping instructional personnel earn credentials in “scientifically researched and evidence-based reading instruction.”
• $52,692.56 for principals and teachers to earn reading credentials.

Schools also spend $4,538,606 on “scientifically researched and evidence-based supplemental instructional materials.”

There isn’t a dollar amount attached to the line item, but the document includes space for before or after school/summer intensive reading instruction, incentives for professional development, tutoring programs and family engagement activities.

The Duval County Public Schools (DCPS) has an annual budget of $2.6 billion.

DCPS spends $8,020 per student.

DCPS received $159 million in COVID relief funding “to close learning gaps.”

Last year DCPS received $6 million in cash from the state’s “mental health assistance allocation fund.”

DCPS received $20 million from the state for transportation and school buses and still can’t manage to get kids to school on time. Hopefully, there is wiggle room in that $20 million for a few scientifically researched and evidence-based alarm clocks.

That is roughly $173 million dollars spent on teaching kids how to read and the mayor’s committee admits thousands of Duval’s kids are still illiterate.

So, more must be spent.

City Council provided the mayor with more than $25 million in slush money… oops… “Task Force funding” to implement the 2023 Transition Committee Report.

Out of that $25 million Deegan allocated $5,370,000 for “Youth and Families.”

Out of that $5.3 million, the mayor wants to spend $1.9 million on after-school and summer literacy programs and $1.95 million on multilayer literacy programs, to “expand upon the Read Jax literacy campaign.”

Read Jax is a “city-wide alliance of nonprofit organizations” partnering with DCPS to “raise awareness in the community and to help families support the literacy development of their children.”

Of course, the mayor’s team has researched and vetted the completely nonpartisan “independent” literacy nonprofits receiving millions of our tax dollars, right?

The Read Jax website lists 24 nonprofits as Jax Read Partners. These groups all “support the literacy development” of children by teaching them the best way for them to succeed is implementing racial segregation via the DEI banner. These nonprofits support educational racism by teaching forced equal outcomes from educators of the same skin color advance literacy, while intentionally depriving minority children’s right of equal opportunity. Equal outcomes equal collectivism: Marxism 101.

The first nonprofit listed is the Jacksonville Public Education Fund (JPEF). This group loves diversity. They believe what divides us brings us together… somehow.

The JPEF uses “studies” which are nothing more than class warfare word salads written by academics and journalists, to explain why black kids are suffering because of white teachers dominating the profession.

Example: “The benefits of diversity have been found to be limited in districts where historically marginalized students are clustered in a few schools and in schools where historically marginalized students are underrepresented in gifted or advanced courses, because the students are not experiencing authentic diversity in their daily classroom experience.”

That is how “educated” people say black kids miss out on gifted courses because of the racism of white teachers.

So, for the past two years, the JPEF along with DCPS, UNF, Jaguars and “many community partners” have worked really hard to make sure white teachers are not teaching “historically marginalized” children in Jacksonville, with the 1000BY2025 Initiative.

According to JPEF 43% of students in Duval are black, but less than 6 percent of teachers are black men. Former DCPS Superintendent Dianna Greene said students in Duval are still receiving a “high quality education” even though racial demographics “don’t match up.” But she wants us to know how much better it would be if white people didn’t teach black kids.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/bqCnZFLV5Lc .

The video also features a teacher from DuPont Middle School using a soft, reassuring voice to say teachers with the same skin color as a student allows the teacher to care about the child and vice versa. A seventh-grader tells the camera he has hope for the future because his teacher looks like him.

Everyone needs to watch as people in our school system, city government and nonprofits push and celebrate a segregationist policy as a benefit to minority children and society. YouTube turned off comments for the video. Apparently, the racist propaganda video wasn’t offensive, just the comments.

The 1000BY2025 Initiative “focuses on the recruitment and retention of high-quality Black and Latino male educators to Duval County Public Schools.”

One of the totally non-political ways the Jacksonville Public Education Fund is recruiting black males into the profession is “through focused efforts” of more race hustling nonprofits as explained in the Diverse Teachers Pipeline.

Starting as teenagers, these young men are taught identity politics advances societies via government nonprofits and funneled to a government career pushing out more political activists working towards Obama’s presidential promise of America’s “fundamental transformation.”

The Jaguars Inspire Change campaign recently celebrated “teachers of color” by hosting a segregated back to school party on the field. The team along with the Jacksonville Public Education Fund held a “training camp” just for DCPS’ black male teachers so they could “gear up” for the school year.

Watch here: https://www.jaguars.com/video/inspire-change-adding-1-000-male-teachers-of-color-to-classrooms-by-2025

The Jags & JPEF together, along with the public schools also sponsored a segregated dinner inside the stadium’s club lounge “exclusively for local Black male educators.”

The event was to honor a group called The Ones, which is a “collective of faculty who oftentimes feel like the only ones in their schools.”

Moving on to the Community Foundation for Northeast Florida.

This organization wants to promote a “safe and inclusive community for all” by advancing “equal outcomes for all.” The best way for the foundation to do that is by partnering with “Elevate Women” and “My Village Project Fund.”

Elevate Women is a group promoting the advancement of liberal women in corporate leadership and government. This is a national left-wing nonprofit pushing like-minded progressive woman into positions of power. Locally, I cannot find much on the group. I did see they are affiliated with a local membership-only company called “She is Fierce.” One of the documents names our mayor’s Director of Strategic Initiatives & Press Liaison as the Steering Committee’s representative. The group also lists the Donna Foundation as one of the nonprofits it supports.

The My Village Fund Project is a “collective of Black nonprofits, stakeholders and investors reimagining education for students of color.” And by “reimagine” they really mean segregation. “Our core belief Is that the integration of Black communities into the creative process of education reform is the missing catalyst for improving outcomes for students of color.”

Ronnie King, a co-founder of My Village Fund Project, says people have tried, but nothing has worked. So, King also believes segregation and a type of educational racial leadership hierarchy will do the trick. King claims, “We’ve tried a lot of different programs and strategies in the Black community, but we haven’t seen the kind of turnaround we want. The one thing we have not tried is allowing Black-led organizations to be the ones leading the change.”

I wonder if he believes segregation could work outside the classroom, as well.

904ward’s vision is to use “collective action” to “end racism in Jacksonville so all people can thrive.” One way the group is ending racism is by hosting “race card conversations.” Apparently, using a deck of cards to proposition people with questions like, “When did

you first become aware of your race?” and “What do the hashtags #blacklivesmatter and #alllives matter mean to you?” is a terrific way to bring people together.

One of the white founding members of the group says she wanted to create 904ward to build “brave spaces” for “channeling grief, sadness and rage as well as joy and understanding and solidarity in collective action.” Either she is speaking from experience, or she was taught to become a Marxist activist.

904ward is also ending racism by creating the Jacksonville Community Remembrance Project. The project says Jacksonville is part of an “epidemic” of “racial terror lynchings” after eight people were lynched a century ago.

With national support from the Equal Justice Initiative, the JCRP holds Soil Ceremonies around town to remember the victims. The group places soil in engraved glass urns to display at M.O.S.H. and at a national memorial site in Montgomery, Ala.

The project’s members claim the victim’s death is not about the “guilt or innocence of the person murdered.” Hmmm… I wonder why they mentioned that.

Of Jacksonville’s eight, three were accused of “brutal attacks” upon women, (meaning, it rhymes with ‘grape.’), two were accused of murder, one was a black bootlegger killed by white bootleggers, nothing is known about one of the victims other than his decapitated body was found in December 1923. Only one out of the eight was proven innocent. Benjamin Hart was lynched after being falsely identified as a peeping Tom. His story is heartbreaking and deserves to be told.

The whole point of the Jacksonville Community Remembrance Project is to use taxpayer funding to indoctrinate us into believing Jacksonville is a historically racist town and people are still experiencing the same racism today because 100 years ago one, maybe two innocent men were lynched. As terrible as that is, it does not mean racism is alive and thriving amongst our people today. It also means, putting on silly racial healing skits in city parks certainly won’t “end racism” either.

Another way the 904ward is using taxpayer money to stop racism is by installing Little Free Diverse Libraries around town with the help of the Read in Color campaign.

According to the group “only 46% of children’s books depict non-white characters.”

So, representation is basically even, but don’t believe your lying eyes. Racism is systemic — even when it isn’t, it is.

The group believes everyone feels empowered with the “opportunity to discover a personally relevant book to read is not limited by time, space, or privilege.”

Limited by time, space and privilege?! Honestly, where do they come up with this stuff? I would laugh if I wasn’t paying for it.

The goal is to stock the shelves with books “that provide perspectives on racism and social justice; celebrate BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized voices; and incorporate experiences from all identities for all readers.” Just not conservative, Christian, Jewish or patriotic American experiences.

Understand, the whole point of inclusion is to exclude the values a vast majority of Americans cherish.

904ward wants to make sure inappropriate books pulled from public schools are available for Duval’s children outside of the classroom. The group’s website has a list of seven “banned books” it wants to make sure are available at each Free Diverse Little Library. Books like, Rainbow Revolutionaries and Soldier for Equality, are available for your little ones to browse through. I know my kids can’t wait to get their hands on books about gay, trans and labor union heroes. They don’t know what any of those things are… but 904ward thinks it is important for them to learn about it and the mayor thinks it is important to fund it. Just to point out how lazy these people are… I found four of the seven books listed as “banned” still available in DCPS libraries.

The Jaguars are so proud of the CEO of 904ward, the organization presented Dr. Kimberly Allen its first Duval Diversity Playmaker Award for social justice.

The team gave Allen a personalized jersey and a hardy handshake for pretending to end racism in Jacksonville. Maybe if the Jags focused more on playing football instead of playing politics, we wouldn’t be facing another embarrassing losing streak.

The Literacy Alliance of Northeast Florida is also a Read Jax partner. The Literacy Alliance provides formal instruction and volunteer-based tutoring to teens and adults. The group also believes what divides people beings them together with the Left’s favorite proverb: “Diversity Is Our Superpower.”

The Literacy Alliance makes condescending claims like one in five adults in Duval have “considerable difficulty comprehending print material.” And, “55% of the adult population could benefit from increased literacy instruction that would empower them economically, socially, and civically.”

The group wants us to know they “recognize” how important human differences are and advocate for “our students’ equity and self-efficacy by engaging with civic and community leaders, policy makers, and elected officials.” Nonprofits recognizing differences and partying with government results in rising literacy rates, somehow.

The Literacy Alliance’s “volunteer-based tutors” are sent from AmeriCorps in D.C. and in exchange for rent, health insurance and scholarships they must spend a year dedicated to the Literacy Alliance’s mission of increasing “awareness.” And then after we are all aware of illiteracy, then they will improve teen and adult literacy in Northeast Florida.

$173 million plus $5 million more for an army of teachers, tutors and nonprofits all focused on one thing…. Diversity.

The committee also recommends:

• More literacy training for DCPS teachers and early learning providers.
• A city wide VPK awareness program.
• Expand after school programs and tutoring via nonprofits.
• Address literacy disparities by providing additional resources to high-poverty schools as well as services to “address social, emotional, and mental health needs.
• Host collaborative roundtables and neighborhood dialogues.
• Create shared progress indicators across organizational boundaries to display citywide.
• Create Community Hope and Literacy Centers.
• Expand the Kids Hope Alliance.
• Establish a Master Calendar of city events for families.

Deegan has enlisted the help of politicians, race hustling nonprofits, political activists, corporations and the school system to help solve Jacksonville’s reading “crisis.”

In times of crisis, most seek God’s help for guidance or turn to family.

However, for this crisis, only those who believe in the healing powers of DEI can rise to the challenge.

God, the church, religion nor the nuclear family is considered a solution to improving literacy in Donna’s plan. Every proven metric for a child’s academic success is completely ignored. It almost seems like it is on purpose.

If the family or God can help you, then Donna’s plan can’t. And the house of cards collapses. They can’t have that.

Duval’s Title 1 students are illiterate because the people running our public education system and local government have allowed openly racist political nonprofits to infect our schools with racial segregationist ideology while pretending to teach kids how to read.

There is no solution in teaching children their skin color dictates an oppressed or oppressor status. Furthermore, nothing good can come of implementing racial segregation as reparational payback for the sins of our father’s father’s father.

For more than four decades, the political class has worked incredibly hard building “the system.” The politicians who make up our city government and school board are “the system.” They created it. They fund it. And they work very hard to preserve it. The system must maintain the status quo, otherwise people would be held accountable.

The mayor’s Task Force Budget is simply beating a dead horse with a $5 million-dollar sledgehammer while praying to a non-denominational deity, it works. Even if it doesn’t… which it won’t, they will say it does. And in turn even more funding is needed to continue the good work. All the while, the poor black kids our mayor is promising to save, still can’t read.

SOURCES USED:

Duval County District K-12 Comprehensive Evidence-Based Reading Plan: https://dcps.duvalschools.org//cms/lib/FL01903657/Centricity/Domain/4382/Duval%20CERP%202023-2024f2%20Approved.pdf

https://dcps.duvalschools.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=70977&dataid=101556&FileName=2023-24%20Decision%20Tree%20K-5.pdf (decision trees)

file:///C:/Users/owner/Desktop/COJ%20Transition.pdf

https://dcps.duvalschools.org/Page/29135 (academics tab)

https://www.jaxpef.org/news-articles/why-equity-is-for-everyone

https://www.jaxcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Florida-Women-and-Leadership-Final.pdf

https://sheisfiercehq.com/companies

https://myvillageproject.com/index.html

Edgar Phillips info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPsuPp0_-M