Michael LaForgia

For 30 years, the best school in Florida's Pinellas County was in a black neighborhood. Then the School Board stepped in.

Most large Florida school districts are moving away from suspending children for nonviolent misbehavior — part of a nationwide consensus that harsh discipline falls unfairly on black kids and leaves struggling students too far behind. The Pinellas County School District is an outlier.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan delivered a stinging rebuke to Florida's Pinellas County School District, calling the rapid decline of five predominantly black neighborhood schools a "man-made disaster" and "education malpractice."

Using state and district personnel records, Times reporters compared teachers hired by the five resegregated schools with those hired at schools in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods. They found teachers in the whiter schools are more experienced and more likely to stay in their jobs.

To Campbell Park. To Fairmount Park. To Lakewood, Maximo, or Melrose. The five worst elementary schools in Pinellas County­ — all among the very worst schools in Florida — have seats with their name tags on them.

With a dramatic flourish, a longtime education activist recently unfurled a Confederate battle flag in front of Pinellas County School Board members, saying they had failed black students in five neighborhood schools in south St. Petersburg.

Black leaders in Florida's Pinellas County say the school district broke promises they made to settle a lawsuit accusing them of shortchanging black students. The criticism comes in the wake of the publication of "Failure Factories," a yearlong investigation by the Tampa Bay Times.

Violence is a part of daily life in the most segregated elementary schools in Pinellas County, Florida. Five elementary schools had more violence than all 17 high schools combined.

Michael LaForgia wrote this story for the Tampa Bay Times as part of a 2015 National Health Journalism Fellowship....