Details of state OIG investigation of Duval schools’ delay of teacher misconduct reporting released

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Action News Jax’s Ben Becker has newly obtained a Florida Department of Education Office of Inspector General investigation report on Duval County Public Schools’ delay in reporting to the Office of Professional Practices Services (PPS) dozens of allegations of teacher misconduct.

We told you Thursday that Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. mentioned the investigation results in a letter from Diaz to Interim Superintendent Dr. Dana Kriznar. In that letter, Diaz said he was concerned by the “lack of progress” in issues “affecting the health, safety and welfare of students in Duval County Public Schools.”

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In the Thursday letter, Diaz cited the recent arrest of Douglas Anderson School of the Arts teacher Christopher Allen-Black on a charge of exposure of sexual organs, saying the district didn’t move quickly enough in removing Allen-Black from the classroom after his arrest on Feb. 24.

In the OIG report, which is dated Jan. 25. Under the “allegations and findings” section, it says that, “Former DCPS OPS Supervisor Reginald Johnson failed to report alleged teacher misconduct to the FDOE.”

In its “recommendations” section, the OIG recommended that the Duval County School Board “review its internal policies to ensure that district policies accurately reflect district practices.”

RELATED: Education Commissioner expresses concerns in letter sent to DCPS about student safety

The OIG said that DCPS should “establish and implement policies to adequately report and track OPS’s submission of cases to PPS” and make sure that “all cases have been reported to FDOE PPS as required by state statute at the conclusion of the district’s audit.”

Kriznar told the OIG in December in a response to the report’s findings that Johnson was not initially placed on leave in 2023, but was “‘reassigned to an alternative worksite pending investigation. After being notified of his reassignment, Johnson elected not to work at the alternative worksite and used his own accrued leave.’ Johnson ultimately retired from the district.”

According to the report, former Superintendent Dr. Diana Greene told the OIG in her testimony that Johnson was placed on leave, but he was reassigned.

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Johnson also responded to the findings in December and “denied being solely responsible for reporting teacher misconduct to FDOE PPS and asserted that all investigators ‘had the same responsibility for submitting their cases but failed to do so.’”

Becker also obtained a letter sent to Kriznar on Feb. 13 by Paul Burns, the Chancellor of Public Schools, saying he expected an “immediate response on how DCPS plans to implement the recommendations made by the OIG and ensure that all future reports to PPS are within the statutory timelines.”

In a response letter to Burns on Feb. 16, obtained by Becker, Kriznar said one of the steps the district took to improve reporting was the creation of “an online reporting system to allow schools to report employee misconduct online.”

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Kriznar said the district “transitioned from reporting employee misconduct to FDOE from using the U.S. Postal Service to reporting cases to the FDOE online.”

She also said that the “district developed an online system for students, parents, and community stakeholders to report employee misconduct anonymously directly to the district, without the need to go through school or district administration.”

You can read the report, as well as the letters from Burns and Kriznar, below:

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