POLL: Many parents rate Duval 'poor' in public school performance, high confidence in teachers

The Jacksonville Public Education Fund released its annual poll results on the public's perception of Duval County Public Schools, revealing more confidence in teachers but lower confidence on school performance.

In its fourth annual poll, the organization asked participants to rate the district's school performance as either excellent, good, satisfactory or poor. For this year's poll, more people rated the district's performance as poor.

A quarter of the 510 poll participants was made up of parents that had children attending a Duval County public school.

“What’s interesting is that (the results) contradict some of what we hear from parents, who have very positive perceptions of what’s happening in their children’s school,” said Trey Csar, president of Jacksonville Public Education Fund.

Cindy Bernhard is one of those parents. She has two children, one in seventh grade and the other in ninth grade, attending school in Duval County.

"I have seen (my children) do very well in Duval. The county does get a bad rap," Bernhard said. "I have definitely seen an improvement from what it was in the past. I’ve been in Jacksonville my whole life."

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Poll participants were also asked to rate the highest area of concern for Jacksonville. Participants ranked crime (48.6 percent) as the most important, followed by education (20.6 percent) and the city's economy (12.5 percent).

In addition, seventy-four percent of participants said they would support a small tax increase if the funds went to public education.

The poll also revealed that participants believed the graduation rate in Duval County public schools was 62 percent when it was actually higher than 79 percent.

Click here to view the full results of the annual perceptions poll.

Cox Media Group