The School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) unanimously decided Tuesday to hold off on approving a contract for Newberry’s charter school until a special meeting on June 9.
The decision came during a regular meeting on the last day of school with over 40 items filling the agenda, which Board Chair Sarah Rockwell said was one of their fullest ever.
In February, the Florida Charter School Review Commission unanimously voted to approve the application to convert Newberry Elementary School into a charter school that would be known as Newberry Community School.
According to the five year contract, which the board received from the state the day before the meeting, the charter’s term would begin on July 1, 2026, and end June 30, 2031, with the school opening in August 2026.
Board members tabled the item because they didn’t feel like they could make the best decision without more time to read the contract.
Interim Superintendent Kamela Patton said the prolonged date shouldn’t incur repercussions, considering the state knows the SBAC’s deadline and when they have meetings.
“They knew the deadline of the school board meeting,” Patton said. “To be perfectly honest, and I’m not trying to cause a problem, but they have been told very clearly when we needed [the contract] and when we needed to have it posted. I think we’ve done our job. Every time it came back to us, we turned it right around.”
The special meeting for the Newberry contract is scheduled for 9 a.m. on June 9.
In other board business:
Micanopy charter: The board unanimously moved to renew Micanopy Area Cooperative Charter School’s contract for a 10-year term.
Dual language immersion program: Multiple parents from Terwilliger Elementary also showed up at the meeting to express concerns about proposed changes to the school’s Dual Language Immersion (DLI) magnet program.
Currently, students in the program receive half of their instruction in Spanish and the other half in English.
On June 1, parents received an email from the school’s principal Vicki McAlhany outlining DLI changes for the 2025-26 school year. This included a daily Conversational Spanish through the Arts program for kindergarten through third grade students, which parents feared would replace the fifty-fifty language immersion of the entire course.
Patton, who met with the concerned parents at a separate meeting on Tuesday, said she believed McAlhany had good intentions, but the proposed changes could have been better handled at the school and district levels.
She said the teachers in the program would be staying in their positions and that there would be a district liaison for the parents and stakeholders of each grade level. The kids will stay in their cohorts, but the program will be paused until leadership figures out how to implement enhancements for the next year.
The board and Patton said they didn’t know McAlhany was going to send the email and assured parents they didn’t want the program to change. Board member Janine Plavac received applause from the crowd after saying she believed McAlhany should be let go from her position for the email.
“I was extremely disturbed by the principal’s email,” Plavac said. “She doesn’t transmit a person that has any buy into this program at all…it seems to me, with all the changes we’re doing, that maybe this person needs to be evaluated and not be in this position.”
School-based contracts: The board voted 4-1 to approve the annual contracts for all school-based administrative appointees. Plavac voted against the motion because of her concerns about McAlhany.
District contract extensions: The board also unanimously voted to approve contract extensions for district-level administrators such as human resource supervisors and assistant superintendents for July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026.
Alachua County Public School chief financial officer and deputy superintendent contracts for July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2027 terms also passed, as well as a July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2027 retroactive extension for general counsel.
Board member Thomas Vu also moved to discuss the search for a new superintendent at Tuesday’s meeting, but the motion did not pass.
“We need to start sooner rather than later,” he 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.”
I saw and heard the 2:00pm Tuesday meeting at Terwilliger when Nanette Dell, who is the “Executive Director of Elementary Curriculum” attempted to promote and defend the change in the Dual Language Program that would have essentially gutted it. Principle McAlhany spoke a bit, but the primary proponent was indeed, Dell. That the email to parents came from McAlhany isn’t ‘smoking gun’.
I do NOT think this was initiated by Principle Vicki McAlhany. She wouldn’t have the authority to make such a programmatic change. On the other hand, Nanette Dell, WOULD have had that authority. It’s also telling that it was Dell who worked hardest to defend and attempt to justify the change that had been announced.
I agree. No principal would have sent an email drastically changing a program without someone at the district telling her to. Heck, they probably even approved the letter before she sent it. What’s sad is they let her just take the hit from Plavac rather than being upfront and owning up to who who was truly behind the letter.
Charter schools and vouchers are destroying our public education system. How insane is it that taxpayer dollars go to “schools” that aren’t even held to the same academic standards as public schools.
Sometimes these options fill a void created by the public school district. For example, ACPS has not built a new high school in almost 50 years. Despite 30 years of unchecked growth in the SW quadrant of this county, the quadrant lacks a high school. Consequently, my children are zoned for a public high school a good 30 min car ride away from our house. Not surprisingly, there are six private/charter options that have formed over the years to fill the void, all at least 10 – 15 min closer than our zoned school.
That’s a good point. However, the high schools we do have are not all utilized efficiently because the school board is afraid to re-zone appropriately and lose some votes here and there when parents get upset that their child is zoned to a new school.
Hence Buchholz is overcrowded and Eastside has capacity.
In addition, Buchholz, GHS and Eastside are neglected facilities. Mold growing everywhere inside and outside, campus grounds not maintained, trash piles around the schools. Bathrooms are disgusting.
Where, exactly, has all the money been going for the past 30 or so years? Other than Santa Fe (where the school board has neglected a sex scandal for years), our high school schools look derelict.
The high schools we have in their current locations may *never* be utilized efficiently is my predicton, not without significant residential growth in east Gainesville. You’ve considered “efficient use” for the district, but if we want to slow the exodus of families, we need to consider efficient use for the families too. Research suggests families value proximity as well as quality.
If this district wants to better compete with the private options, a high school off Parker Rd may do the trick. If the district wants to do it efficiently, then instead of renovating GHS, which is approx 4 miles from BHS and 6 miles from EHS, they move it to Parker Rd, just like they did with Terwilliger.
Charter schools are public schools and are held to the same academic standards as district schools.