Duval County Superintendent Ed  Pratt-Dannals is clearing the air Monday about his retirement from the district and a $100 million dollar reserve fund that was never touched while deep cuts were put into practice throughout the school year.

“I am not being fired, ousted, resigning,” says Dannals in a press conference Monday.

Ed Pratt Dannals addressed his accomplishments and challenges of being a superintendent throughout the years in what he called his retirement speech not announcement.

“I’m very proud of the fact that we have increased academic achievement during the last five years,” says Dannals.

When asked about the rainy day fund he says the fund was never hidden to anyone and the cuts to programs like the JROTC and teaching positions was very hard to do, but required.  According to documents received by the school district, the system had $164 million, $63 million of that money was restricted. So in total, the district had $101 million dollars. Of the school’s budget, the state requires three percent of that to be put into a reserve fund.

“While it may seem counterintuitive that in the timing which we have some of the worst fiscal crisis, we’re carrying over the largest rollovers, this is planned and intentional and is in fact good budgeting practices for which this district ought to be commended for,” says Dannals.

Dannals continued on to say that holding the reserve was fiscally responsible when faced with a case of rising costs and depleting resources.

“If we don’t plan for this, we’d be having a news conference and you’d be asking me to explain why it is we didn’t manage the district funds better, didn’t we know this is going to happen, and why didn’t we account for it,” says Dannals.