- The Alachua County School Board favored option D which proposes closing Stephen Foster and Joseph Williams Elementary schools and rezoning others.
- The plan includes keeping Marjorie K. Rawlings Elementary open, merging Irby Elementary with Mebane Middle, and moving Foster’s STEM program to Metcalfe Elementary.
- High school rezoning under option D would reduce Buchholz capacity from 115% to 101% and increase Eastside capacity from 68% to 86%.
- Board members and public commenters expressed mixed views, with some opposing closures due to community impact and legacy concerns.
The School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) whittled down school closings and consolidations during a regular meeting on Tuesday, inching closer to a final vote for district rezoning on March 12.
Alachua County Public Schools staff presented amended A, B, C and D zoning scenarios as part of the “Our Schools – Future Ready” planning initiative and incorporated updates requested by the board members during a workshop last month.
For elementary schools, the board leaned in favor of amended option D, which marks Stephen Foster Elementary and Joseph Williams Elementary for closure, keeps Marjorie K. Rawlings Elementary open and combines Alachua and Irby Elementary’s with Mebane Middle School.
Although the board requested the boundary to include two zones, staff presented three because they said it lowered the number of schools at capacity from nine to five.
The plan also includes leaving Duval Early Learning Academy as is, with the pre–K VPK center and bringing Foster’s STEM magnet program to Metcalfe Elementary.
Option D for high schools also garnered favor from the board. The plan includes restoring portions of Haile and Newberry Road to Buchholz and shifting some complexes, like Mill Pond condominiums from Gainesville High School to Buchholz.
The changes would drop Buchholz’s capacity from 115% to 101% and raise Eastside High School’s capacity from 68% to 86%. Staff said the board still needs to redistribute programs and magnets to address further capacity issues and consider the impacts of the coming growth in Newberry.
Although the board agreed on how to direct staff before the final vote, members still disagreed with how to rezone or whether to rezone at all.
Board Chair Thomas Vu said he favored the closings, especially Williams Elementary. He said the school should be given back to the city or the Williams family because it was built on a dump site.
“I’m getting emotional about this, because it’s really upsetting to me that this has been the history that we’ve told kids, that’s all [they’re] worth is they go to school on a dump site,” he said.
Board Member Janine Plavac said the district’s plan should address capacity over enrollment because closing schools won’t address the number of children in need of school.
Board Member Leanetta McNealy said she is passionately not in favor of closing any schools because closures often have negative ripple effects on entire communities.
“I’m not in favor of any A, B, C or D,” she said. “Even though I’m one-fifth of a vote, please know that I am not this one-fifth, am not in accordance with any of the plans of closure.”
During public comment, multiple speakers advocated to invest in East Gainesville schools.
Resident Louise Griffin identified as Williams Elementary’s Joseph Williams’ great-great-granddaughter. She said Williams, who donated the land for the school, currently has two great-great-great-great-granddaughters attending the school and called the idea of closing it a sacrilege to his legacy.
“My grandfather gave a gift to love to provide a secure, safe environment in which the children of the community could obtain an education. That safety is being taken away with the proposal of closing Williams and making Lincoln K-8,” Griffin said.
Alachua County Commissioner Ken Cornell also called on the SBAC to factor literacy and economic development into its decision, because he said the state, Alachua County and the city of Gainesville hold financial stakes in it.
He said the entities have over $100 million invested in East Gainesville with projects like the Eighth Avenue and Waldo Road corridor and CRA funds, and that both he and Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward would be discussing literacy plans at their joint meeting on March 9.
Vu said the mayor and other officials could’ve expressed their thoughts publicly if they’d attended the SBAC’s last meeting.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to list the correct schools under the revised elementary plan.
County School Board, How about getting the children’s records, especially their social security numbers and birthdates, out first before the homelessness break into the buildings like they have done before.
I haven’t seen the plans, but if Lincoln will absorb Williams then the elementary will still be there, right? Sounds like not a big deal- BUT the elementary age population is very different from the middle school group. Each one needs specific resources and I think merging them will be a disservice to both.
K-8 schools down south are very convenient, this kids are in different locked areas, elementary and middle schools are in different areas, just like the other schools here that have the K-12
I believe the verbiage associated with the merging of Irby Elementary school and Mebane Middle School is wrong. There are three schools in Alachua. Irby is VPK through 2nd grade. Alachua Elementary School. Is 3rd grade through 5th grade. Mebane Middle School is 6th grade through 8th grade. I believe the author of the article should have stated they Alachua Elementary would merge with Mebane Middle school, not Irby merging with Mebane.
It’s been a moving target.
The original maps closed AES (Alachua Elementary School) and made Irby K5 for half of the city and put the rest of K5 in Mebane for the other half, while keeping all the 6-8 in Mebane. Thus some kids would attend only Mebane for all of K8 while some would move to Mebane only after attending Irby. This is shown in the agenda for the Feb 6 school board meeting and was presented at the many local meetings at the schools, including the ones I attended at HS, Mebane and Oak View.
At the Feb 26 SBAC workshop (which I also attended), board member Vu spoke about his experiences working (teaching?) at Mebane how the whole school needed refurbishing and he didn’t like splitting future Irby kids from the rest of the lower grades who would be attending the K8. He came up with his brainstorm of eliminating both elementary schools and making Mebane K8 the only school for Alachua and suggesting the consultants look at it. It seems that at the March 3rd meeting (which I also attended that was accepted.
I’m not sure why the concensus of the board went that way, but it did.
I have reservations about that, and not because of the K8, which would still occur when closing just Alachua. But it seems silly to me to build a ton of elementary expansion at Mebane, when the city (and whole county) already has too much capacity. So, I say keep Irby open, but as a K5, and make the boundaries for it whatever its capacity is and put the rest of K5 in the MS. If there is an overflow, make a small expansion, but no where the size needed for closing Irby.
Finally, it seems that they might be having an informational meeting at Irby on Tuesday March 10 at 6pm to discuss this.
If you go onto Zillow and find the three schools, Irby, Alachua Elementary, and Mebane you can see the property lines. Unfortunately, you have to zoom in close enough it doesn’t allow you to look at the entire property, and you can only see one at a time. My observation, upon looking at all three in this manner, convinced me that Irby and Mebane are limited in the amount of land currently owned, preventing adding new classroom space. Alachua Elementary, however, looks to have enough land to accommodate a K-8 campus. If you look at the three schools and the surrounding properties, you will see there is little room for property size growth. That said, both Mebane and Alachua Elementary are probably a hundred years old and should be torn down and rebuilt. Over the past 5-7 years, Howard Bishop Middle School, Westwood Middle School, and Littlewood Elementary School were all basically torn down and rebuilt. I suggest the county school system set up a similar program to rebuild Alachua schools for K-8. The one good point is that the Irby school buildings are relatively new (10-15 years old).
This city/county needs and deserves better leadership. What a crap show. Never seen anything like this. We were warned before we moved here to avoid owning a home in alachua co. Now I understand.