- The School Board of Alachua County approved six goals for 2026-27 focused on raising proficiency and narrowing achievement gaps in ACPS.
- ACPS aims to increase ELA proficiency to 61%, math proficiency to 57%, and the graduation rate to 95% by 2026-27.
- The district plans to improve employee retention, maintain a 5% fund balance, and implement 130 standard operating procedures across divisions by 2027.
During a regular meeting Tuesday night, the School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) approved six goals for the 2026-27 school year focused on raising student proficiency, shrinking achievement gaps and strengthening other areas across Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS).
While addressing the board, Dr. Cathy Atria, deputy superintendent of ACPS, said considerations were presented at a workshop on April 29 to identify the SBAC’s goals for the 2026-27 school year.
“The consensus of the board at that time was to bring forward what follows as the board’s formal goals with suggested key performance indicators, also known as KPIs,” she said.
The goals begin with student achievement. The district is aiming for 61% proficiency on the Progress Monitoring (PM) 3 English language arts (ELA) assessment for students in grades 3-10, which is up from 59% in 2025-26. ACPS is also targeting 57% proficiency on PM3 math – Algebra 1 and geometry – assessments for students in grades 3-8, up from 55% in 2025-26.
The district is also aiming for a 95% graduation rate at its seven traditional high schools, up from 94% in 2025-26, and a 91% third-grade promotion rate, up from 89% in 2025-26 but still slightly below the 94% rate recorded in 2023-24.
Board member Janine Plavac asked Atria what she attributed the five-percentage-point decline in third-grade promotion from 2023-2025 to.
“I’m not sure that I have a complete answer for that,” Atria replied. “I think that there are a lot of variables when we think about where those students were in third grade three years previous, and what we knew was happening in schools.”
Along the lines of the first goal, the second goal is focused on reducing achievement gaps, particularly between Black and white students and students with and without disabilities.
ACPS aims to lessen the ELA proficiency gap between white and Black students from 38 percentage points in 2025-26 to 35 this year and the math gap from 40 points to 37. Data provided by the district shows that it has narrowed the ELA and math achievement gaps every year since 2023-24.
As with Black and white students, ACPS is also targeting three-point reductions in the proficiency gaps between students with and without disabilities. The district aims to decrease the ELA gap from 40 percentage points last year to 37 this year and the math gap from 33 points to 30.
The third goal focuses on raising early learning achievement. ACPS wants to increase the percent of voluntary prekindergarten (VPK) students entering school kindergarten-ready.
According to data presented during the meeting, the district’s kindergarten readiness rate fell to 68% in 2025-26, down from 73% in 2024-2025. ACPS is aiming to increase the rate to 71% this year.
The district also wants to increase literacy proficiency among students in kindergarten through second grade.
In addition to academics, the fourth goal focuses on improving employee retention. ACPS aims to raise its instructional staff retention rate to 71% this year, up from 69% in 2025-26, while also establishing separate retention goals for educational support professionals (ESP) and professional and technical employees.
The district aims to increase its school-based administrator retention rate from 88% last year to 91% this year and the district-administrator rate to 89%, up from 87% in 2025-26.
“As we looked at the research, we find that administrators and supervisors are the reasons why employees stay,” Deborah Terry, ACPS’s assistant superintendent for human resources, told the board. “So, we want to work with administrators and supervisors to do what we can in order to create those environments where employees want to come back, where they want to stay, they feel valued.”
Board Vice Chair Leanetta McNealy asked Terry what she was doing differently in HR with the school-based administrators to move from an 88% retention rate to 91%.
“I feel one of the things that we’re doing as a district with school-based administrators is the training that we’re doing – the pipeline that we’re creating,” Terry replied.
McNealy asked Terry to elaborate on her “pipeline,” saying, “I don’t see it.”
“For instance, this year, we’ve gone to full-day meetings with our assistant principals so that they have a half a day…of getting the information, and then the other half is training,” Terry replied. “The more training that we can give to our assistant principals, then that is going to help them stay so that they can look forward to being a principal so that we continually have that pipeline.”
Aside from assistant principals, McNealy asked Terry if they include “any other aspiring folk” in their pipeline.
Terry said the district has an “aspiring leaders’ group” that meets once a month.
“They are looking at spreading what they have,” she said. “One of the other things that we have now are our literacy specialists and our math specialists. They are now becoming those instructional leaders, so they will become our future APs. They will be true instructional leaders because they will have that background. So, as they become APs and then they become principals, that builds the pipeline also.”
Plavac said the district can do a better job at making APs feel appreciated.
“We have heard from different APs that they love doing their job, but they feel they’re undervalued in some respects,” Plavac said, “and I think that’s an area that we could improve on – whether it’s a financial thing, whether it’s going back to their compensation prior to that, I think that’s really, really important, and that’s something we can change.”
The final two goals deal with ACPS operations. To further financial stability, the district aims to maintain a 5% fund balance in its operating funds through June 30, 2027. ACPS also plans to create “real-time dashboards for all schools and district departments to monitor active budgets, expenditures and available balances” by January 2027 and provide financial training to school administrators and staff twice during the school year, according to a presentation in the meeting.
As part of the last goal, the district plans to create 130 standard operating procedures across seven different divisions ranging from operations and facilities to teaching and learning.
Atria said the procedures are necessary to ensure accountability, transparency and continuity; promote consistency across schools and departments; ensure legal compliance and risk education; and improve decision-making efficiency.
The board approved the set of goals unanimously.
Nick Anschultz is a Report for America corps member and writes about education for Mainstreet Daily News. This position is supported by local donations through the Community Catalyst for Local Journalism Fund at the Community Foundation of North Central Florida.