Enrollment is in steep decline In the Duval County Public Schools.
It is because students have choices and are voting with their feet.
The precise numbers are impossible to pin down but any of them show the turnaround.
After years as a near-monopoly, government schools must now compete.
School choice started with charter schools. They were followed with the tax credit scholarship program (vouchers), which initially was limited to low-income students trapped in failing government schools where they were not getting an education and did not have the escape route wealthier families had.
In Florida, vouchers began during the term of Gov. Jeb Bush, and it has been expanding as their popularity soared.
Various sources provide enrollment numbers, including the school system. But the school system has so many ways to count and counts so many times that there apparently is no single reliable number. Even the school system’s own annual audit has a different set of numbers.
For that reason, Eye on Jacksonville turned to artificial intelligence. The AI numbers are close to the official ones but are rounded off and therefore may seem easier to follow.
The AI bot named Copilot produced this:
“Here’s a detailed breakdown of Duval County Public Schools enrollment trends over the past 10 years, based on Florida Department of Education and legislative data:”
| School Year | Approximate Enrollment (PK–12) |
| 2014–15 | 125,000 |
| 2015–16 | 126,000 |
| 2016–17 | 127,000 |
| 2017–18 | 128,000 |
| 2018–19 | 129,000 |
| 2019–20 | 130,000 |
| 2020–21 | 128,000 |
| 2021–22 | 129,500 |
| 2022–23 | 130,000 |
| 2023–24 | 130,000 |
Copilot found steady growth from 2014 to 2020 but said the coronavirus pandemic created a slight dip, with recovery afterward through 2024.
Since that year, the school system’s numbers show losses to charter schools, homeschooling and scholarships.
There are 155 traditional public schools and 42 charter schools in Duval and also 165 private schools, with 71 percent participating in scholarship programs.
Over 10 years, charter school enrollment nearly tripled, growing from 9,000 to 25,000 students and from 7 percent of enrollment to 20 percent.
With the expansion of voucher programs, the traditional schools have lost more than 4,000 students just in the past two years.
Overall, Copilot said traditional public-school enrollment has fallen by 11,000 students, largely due to migration to charter and private schools.
Several years ago, the school district got a half-cent sales tax passed to replace aging schools. Some were built early in the 20th century.
Now, it is contemplating closing some of the remaining old schools and sending their students to newer schools, which makes sense in light of the enrollment loss.
There should be a commensurate loss of teachers as well. The savings in personnel costs and building maintenance should be enough to warrant lower property taxes.
One final benefit is that the competition provided by school choice has resulted in the school district getting an “A” rating for the first time.
The sad part of all this is that it took some 70 years from the time the brilliant economist Milton Friedman suggested vouchers for it to become reality.
Why? The resistance. Although it benefits students, taxpayers and public schools, Democrats and teacher union bosses have fought steadily to stop school choice since its inception.
The old system provided the Democrat Party with a huge stream of cash, essentially laundering money from the taxpayers to the party via the teacher unions. They won’t give it up willingly.
