Q: With the new school year starting soon, do you have anything to share from your office?
A: We are unveiling an initiative in partnership with all four of the school districts in our circuit to try to educate and empower kids. We were seeing a lot of kids resorting to gun violence, sometimes bringing weapons to schools. We felt the State Attorney’s Office’s presence in our schools was lacking and we wanted to reach the kids to help promote their success and keep them safe before laws were broken. So we met with all four local school superintendents, including Tim Forson in St. Johns County, to discuss all manner of things, like substance abuse, vaping, and violence to include bullying. We began working to come up with a curriculum to educate and empower students.
Q: What would this curriculum look like?
A: In middle school, accountability and education are most important for this age group moving from childhood to young adulthood. In high school, we plan to create opportunities to learn the positive things about our office and what it does — likely in the form of internships or externships as well as visits to our office or the courtroom, where students can meet judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement so they can understand how our justice system works.
Our staff could also potentially go into the schools for assemblies or communicate with large groups of students via Zoom.
Q: What caused you to come up with this initiative?
A: I got so tired of prosecuting kids. I wanted the State Attorney’s Office to work on prevention of crime from the front end. I’m very optimistic and excited about this initiative. It’s quite an accomplishment and speaks to the commitment of all four superintendents in our circuit to make this happen. We have a press conference scheduled for Aug. 6 where we will roll out all the details.
