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The Jacksonville City Council is expected to decide whether the school board can hire its own in-house legal counsel.<\/p>\n
This is something that every other public school system in Florida already has the authority to do. But Jacksonville has a decades-old arrangement with its office of general counsel handling the school district\u2019s legal issues. It dates back to Duval\u2019s consolidation.<\/p>\n
In August, the school board adopted a resolution that proposed revisions to the city charter. This resolution paved the way for the board to seek legal independence from the City of Jacksonville\u2019s Office of General Counsel.<\/p>\n
The school board\u2019s legislative platform argues that bringing a legal counsel in-house would not only align representation with the board\u2019s vision and mission but also provide the district freedom from outside influence.<\/p>\n
But Duval parent and advocate, Kattie Hathaway, raised concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllowing our school board to change it just to hire their own legal counsel undermines the foundation of our consolidated government,\u201d Hathaway said. \u201cI cannot emphasize enough how consequential this move would be.\u201d<\/p>\n
A source close to the situation also told Action News Jax the change could potentially be politically motivated, with some considering General Counsel Michael Fackler\u2019s office\u2019s interpretation of the law too progressive and not constitutionally focused.<\/p>\n
But District 7 School Board Member Melody Bolduc said that is not the case at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not political at all,\u201d Bolduc said. \u201cWe have people on both sides of the aisle supporting this move. Truthfully, it\u2019s just the pragmatic move; it just makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said there are 47 board-certified education attorneys in the state, and none of them applied to the city\u2019s job posting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city has shown itself incapable of attracting the kind of attorney we need,\u201d Bolduc said.<\/p>\n
The council is expected to vote on this resolution during Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
And then the Duval Delegation of state legislators will discuss it during a local public hearing on October 22nd at 1:00 p.m.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Jacksonville City Council is expected to decide whether the school board can hire its own in-house legal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,4040,118,117,4045,4042,4041,4039,4044,4043],"class_list":["post-3415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-city-council","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-kattie-hathaway","tag-legal-counsel","tag-legal-issues","tag-office-of-general-counsel","tag-public-school-system","tag-school-board"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}