As school kids prepare to tackle new assignments, the School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) has three major items that still need resolution or direction from past years.
These are projects the school board voted to delay indefinitely, or gave directions on, but remain open question marks.
Superintendent position
A split school board fired former Superintendent Shane Andrew in October 2024 and quickly hired Interim Superintendent Kamala Patton to finish the school year, with plans to conduct a national search for a replacement.
In January, district staff presented options for a superintendent search, but school board members worried about the tight timeframe to replace Patton by her contract expiration on June 30.
Board member Thomas Vu said the district needed to bring order to the chaos to attract the best applicants, and Board member Sarah Rockwell said the timeline would place public interviews in May when the district is already busy with end-of-year events.
To give breathing room, Patton offered to extend her contract, with a $234,000 annual salary, through June 2026 and said she wouldn’t apply for the permanent position.
Vu proposed a motion in June that the school board discuss the search, including who the district contracts to perform the work. But no one seconded the motion, and no discussion followed.
“We need to start sooner rather than later,” Vu said. “Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves in the same position we were in earlier in this fiscal year, to where it was too late to start.”
Newberry Charter School
Newberry Elementary School parents and staff voted by the slimmest possible margin to change into a charter school with its own administration, leaving SBAC oversight.
Florida’s Charter School Review Commission agreed with Newberry charter proponents and said the vote followed state law. But the school board, which opposed the change, contested the vote and appealed to the Charter School Appeal Commission.
That appeal was scheduled for a hearing on July 16 but was delayed to allow 30 days for Newberry Community School organizers to prepare responses.
Newberry officials continue planning charter school operations, and the school board is arranging matters for parents who want their kids to remain in the public school system—including busing students to the city of Alachua, city or Archer or city of High Springs.
But the Newberry charter school conversion impacts more than just the city. School Board member Tina Certain said the extended application and the appeal process is also delaying the district’s rezoning.
Sneaking under the Newberry charter school heading, rezoning is the fourth open question for the school board.
SBAC started its rezoning initiative in 2023 and hosted workshops with parents across the district.
The goal is to balance school populations by redrawing which portions of Alachua County attend which schools. Growth in the western portion of the county boosted school populations to capacity and beyond, while schools in the eastern portion had room to spare.
Newberry Elementary School was listed at 141% capacity in 2023, one of the reasons leaders pushed for an independent charter school. Nearby elementary schools also sat around full capacity, or past it. High Springs had a student population at 98% of capacity, with Archer at 93%, Meadowbrook at 115%, Hidden Oak at 106%, Chiles at 103% and Wiles at 120%.
The situation repeats with middle and elementary schools.
However, the district delayed a decision to allow more analysis after complaints from parents, with hopes to implement the new zoning for the 2025-2026 school year. But last year, the school board failed to secure a contract with a rezoning consultant.
Since then, the school board has focused on the Newberry Elementary School charter conversion. Without the elementary school, the district will have to rethink the map, and if Newberry’s middle and high school also change to charter schools, the decision could further affect the rezoning process in coming years.
Citizens Field
The most recent project on the list, the city of Gainesville, started talks with SBAC in the spring to decide the future of Citizens Field. Gainesville wanted the school district, the primary user of the stadium, to help cover the cost of a new or renovated facility.
The school district said it had to buy the property in order to help.
The city signaled its willingness to entertain the notion and directed staff to negotiate a proposal. But the school district’s first draft met resistance from the city manager, who called it untenable.
Gainesville is in the middle of creating a redevelopment plan for the entire 36-acre site that includes the stadium, Martin Luther King Jr. Multipurpose Center, Dwight H. Hunter Pool and open grounds.
The project cost for brand new buildings, parking and internal roadways stretched well beyond $100 million. The city also has options to just renovate some facilities and scale back the overall project.
The city owns the stadium, but Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) manages the property through a 40-year contract. If the school board partnered on the stadium, the city could reallocate millions for the rest of the redevelopment.
Estimates for Citizens Field range from a $10 million renovation to a $35 million new stadium and track.
The Gainesville City Commission said it had no real use for a sports stadium, with no football team to take the field, but wants to continue the legacy of high school sports, Fifth Grade Field Days and other events at the location.
The school district said it will need a stadium for its three Gainesville high schools, and staff said it’s not feasible to build stadiums at each school. However, the school district said it lacked the finances to support the renovation without first owning the property.
SBAC said it’s only willing to use Capital Outlay Funding, restricted by Florida law, for the construction and renovation of district-owned property.
In a draft plan, Interim Superintendent Kamela Patton said the school district—because the development would require millions—would need Gainesville to sell the property for $1.
She said the district would also need Gainesville to perform additional environmental testing, to conduct the demolition of the current stadium, to provide two feet of clean dirt across the entire site, to simultaneously develop design and construction of parking and stormwater facilities and to give timelines and scopes for the rest of the redevelopment on the 36 acres.
The school district said it wasn’t currently interested in swapping property for the stadium land and that it hoped to build the new stadium to Florida High School Athletic Association standards in order to host state-level competitions.
Gainesville City Manager Cynthia Curry called the initial draft a nonstarter.
“The terms outlined shift an overwhelming portion of project costs, responsibilities and risks to the City while requiring the conveyance of public land at a nominal price,” Curry said in a June letter.
She said the partnership must have shared responsibility, financial transparency and “mutual respect for each party’s obligations to the taxpayers they serve.”
Curry noted that the stadium will be surrounded by city facilities and the current proposal lacks any assurances that the stadium would be maintained, used for a long period of time or remain in public hands.
“In return, the City gets…nothing – not even the guarantee that a stadium will be built in a timely fashion,” Curry said.
Curry countered and said the school board would need to accept a greater share of the project cost and risk. She added that the city wanted the school board’s full plan for the site before it agreed to essentially give the property away for $1.
The 40-year contract for Citizens Field ends in 2026, and the school district doesn’t currently have another full stadium. Staff have looked at other options, but the school board instructed that Citizens Field should be the primary aim.
If the Citizens Field project moves forward, the school district may need to find temporary solutions for upcoming football seasons, like busing teams to Hawthorne or Alachua to play.
We have kids. They get into school. All smiles and fun in k-2. Then in 3rd we notice not homework. Same in 4th. Barely and in 5th. We hear about brawls in elementary, and worse in middle-school. We get concerned. We start to question the administration and the board.
Kids who do extra work at home, who are encouraged to take in more than the thin-gruel which passes as education in elementary school, find out the extra work doesn’t necessarily earn a seat in a good magnet program because now 50% of those seats go to mediocre students through a lottery. Furthermore, the lucky kids who do get into the magnets find that the pace is much slower than expected. Why? Because teachers are compassionate and want all the kids to pass, so the lottery winners slow down the classes.
Meanwhile, parents with children who have diagnosed learning challenges spend years going through hoops to receive promised assistance, but once the kids get to middle-school, good luck, start all over again.
Turns out both gifted and challenged are two sides of the same ESE coin.
School breakfast? Plastic-wrapped French-toast fingers dipped in high-fructose artificially flavored syrup? Chicken sausage wrapped in weird tasting pancakes? Gag inducing strawberry flavored milk or chocolate milk, both unbearably sweet skim-milk? Frosted flakes? Ok, kids all sugared up and ready to learn? Then lunch. Nearly zero nutrition, but something to push around while talking to classmates at the table.
Hmm. Art? Sometimes once a week. PE, maybe. Music? Try chorus for socializing.
EDEP? Safe and fun, but no homework help. Oh, wait, no problem because there is no homework.
By middle-school we realize there’s trouble. We are either lucky enough to find a private or charter alternative, or we cross our fingers and hope for the best. In the meantime, we are working, trying to get home on time to put some healthy meals on the table, help a little with homework, try to keep the kids off social media, communicate about what’s happening in school…If one kid is in a magnet while a younger kid is still in elementary, crazy different start times, but that’s what being a parent is all about, right?
Ok! They get into high school. By now we know something is rotten in Denmark, that the school board and the administration is a joke. College? Research. Pray. Beg, borrow, steal. The kids graduate. We’re still working.
Now school is no longer our problem. Let the next generation of suckers fix it.
Keep in mind as you go through this narrative, that you are seeing the end result of a quarter century of the GOP vision for education. Started with JEB! in 1999 and the supposed “success” of his and following education reforms have been touted every year by Republicans. So give some thought to who you’ve been electing over the years and how their promises compare to what was delivered.
The SBAC? A vote of No Confidence.
The Newberry Charter school situation is simple. They didn’t get the vote they wanted, so they went to Daddy Desantis and got it approved. Parents don’t want this. There’s no curriculum, no plan for overcrowding, just “trust us bro.” It’s going to be a disaster.