Jacksonville’s public school system is shrinking, but the budget is not. That contradiction should make every taxpayer wonder.
When voters approved a half‑cent sales tax to replace aging schools, they expected renewal. Instead, enrollment has dropped, parents have fled to charters and private schools, and the district has scaled back its ambitions. Thirty new schools were planned originally. Five have been built. Only eight more are in the plan that was revised two years ago. Ten have been closed.
Yet the district will still spend the entire $2.7 billion raised. Spending more, delivering less — that’s the reality in Duval County.
Empty seats, old buildings
The average school building here is 48 years old, still among the oldest in Florida, even though school officials promised it would drop to an average of 33 years within 11 years. Utilization is just 73% of capacity, meaning that in effect nearly a quarter of classrooms sit empty. Other districts do far better. Why not close more schools, especially the oldest ones?
Consolidation makes sense — but faces backlash
The district has begun merging campuses: Annie R. Morgan into Biltmore, Kings Trail into Beauclerc, Susie Tolbert into S.P. Livingston. These are rational moves. Fewer students should mean fewer schools. But some residents protest moving students from Long Branch Elementary, built during World War I, into R.L. Brown, built the year the Korean War ended. The protests are not on educational grounds, but racial ones — objecting to combining schools with different demographics.
Sixty years ago, the fight was to end segregation. Now, astonishingly, some seek to preserve single-race schools.
Enrollment down, spending up
The numbers tell the story:
- Enrollment has fallen 11% since 2015.
- Teacher headcount has dropped from 8,000 to 5,700.
Teacher salary is one of the biggest costs — and yet, the budget that was moving downward has reversed course:
| Fiscal Year | Total Budget | Capital Outlay | Non‑Capital Spending |
| 2023 | 2,695 | 484 | 2,211 |
| 2024 | 3,498 | 1,151 | 2,347 |
| 2025 | 3,275 | 1,032 | 2,243 |
| 2026 | 3,237 | 941 | 2,296 |
Non‑capital spending — the day‑to‑day costs of running schools — is creeping upward again. Why? With fewer students, fewer teachers, and excess capacity, the budget should be diminishing.
The bottom line
Duval County is spending billions to maintain a system that serves fewer children every year. Taxpayers agreed to shell out more on the promise of renewal. What they’re getting is the usual bureaucratic resistance to change, dressed up as progress.
District officials would not answer basic questions Eye on Jacksonville asked about capacity and staffing, so some of these figures come from AI sources and media reports.
Regardless, the public should demand accountability. Otherwise, Jacksonville will keep spending more for less — and children will pay the price.
