Bowing to Trump DEI ban, Duval schools end minority/women business plan, focus on small biz
First Coast News | By Steve Patterson | May 8, 2025
“I don’t like this one at all,” board member Darryl Willie said before casting the lone vote against the change, which six board members supported.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Duval County School Board scrapped a longstanding program to hire minority- and women-owned businesses Tuesday night, committing instead “to provide expanded and equitable participation by small and micro businesses.”
The school district’s Office of Economic Opportunity will administer a new “Small/Micro Business Enterprise” hiring effort designed to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs in organizations receiving federal funding.
The new program is intended “to promote equal opportunity for all segments of the contracting community to participate in Board contracts,” read a policy amendment the board approved.
In a tacit nod to criticisms of DEI, the new policy described its aim as a race- and gender-neutral process “to advance the Board’s compelling interest in ensuring that it is neither an active nor passive participant in private sector marketplace discrimination.”
The interest became more compelling when the U.S. Department of Education said in April that local school districts would have to certify compliance with non-discrimination requirements ― which would include the DEI ban.
Gov. Ron DeSantis had previously overseen a state-level drive against DEI with significant impacts on the state’s education system.
If federal decision-makers saw the school district as being non-compliant with the executive order, “the ramifications could be the loss of federal funding,” attorney Ray Poole told the board on what was already scheduled to be his final night advising the members.
The Florida Department of Education said April 28 that all of the state’s school districts had certified they were meeting anti-discrimination obligations outlined in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Florida school districts overall received 17.28% of their 2022-23 funding from federal sources, according to a state “funding book” for the current budget year.
The Small/Micro Business Enterprise program replaces the school district’s Minority/Women Business Enterprise Program, which was based on policies dating back to 1997, with several changes since then.
Jacksonville City Hall developed a similar program decades ago but later adopted a Small and Emerging Business program designed to help small businesses develop regardless of owners’ race.
The school district’s now-defunct program was initially crafted to meet federal court rulings requiring that any advantages it created be “narrowly tailored” to address systemic disadvantages that courts had previously found were documented as impacting some segments of society.
Junking that system generated a small measure of pushback, both on the board and from several members of the public who spoke at a hearing before the vote.
“I don’t like this one at all,” board member Darryl Willie said before casting the lone vote against the change, which six board members supported.
Critics during the public comment period noted the executive order has faced legal challenges and urged the board to wait until courts decide whether the order will stand.
But Poole told Willie that restoring the old program was “something that could be revisited down the road” if opponents of the anti-DEI order ultimately succeed.
