The School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) voted unanimously to postpone its discussion of the school calendar for Rawlings Elementary School, which it was scheduled to vote on during a regular meeting on Tuesday.
Rawlings began using a year-round calendar at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, under a state pilot program that is meant to help the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) Commission decide whether to recommend year-round calendars for all students.
Metcalfe Elementary School was also initially included in the program, but board members and citizen commenters maintained concerns until Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) finally asked the state to allow Metcalfe to stay on a 10-month calendar, as an alternative for families that did not want to deal with year-round school.
Board Member Thomas Vu said on Tuesday that Rawlings’ enrollment, compared year-over-year, has dropped 108 students since before it began using a year-round calendar.
“That’s over 25% of the student population at Rawlings, which tells me we did a terrible job at informing families that this year-round school is happening,” Vu said.
Vu said he hoped to do better with community engagement in the next year, but he also asked staff if there is any consequence to ending the pilot program before the four-year commitment is over.
Jacquatte Rolle, chief of teaching and learning, said she could check. Board members also asked Rolle to check Rawlings’ attendance numbers on days when 10-month students are out of school, and to see whether the students who left Rawlings had transferred to a different ACPS school or left the public school system.
Board Member Tina Certain said the parent feedback the board has received has been negative, though Board Member Leanetta McNealy said the board has not heard from very many parents.
McNealy raised a concern that the board might make a hasty decision based on one or two parents’ complaints before end-of-year data shows whether the calendar has been effective.
“I don’t know how many of those kids went to Metcalfe from Rawlings,” McNealy said. “But what I do know is that a plan is in place, we have not completed the year, and we are already talking about making some significant changes in the schedule, as far as a withdrawal.”
Certain added to the list of staff requests that she would like to see the plan that is in place at Rawlings.
Interim superintendent Kamela Patton said she could make sure the board members’ requests are fulfilled, but asked if they would also like her to survey parents and school staff to hear their input.
Vu agreed that such surveys would be good, and asked Patton to add in the results of the Progress Monitoring 2 test, which should provide a benchmark for the December/January timeframe.
After a motion from Vu and a second from McNealy, the board voted unanimously to table the Rawlings calendar until the next meeting on March 11.
The board did successfully approve the 10-month academic calendar for the rest of the district’s schools on Tuesday, though Certain noted her discomfort with closing school for the full week of Thanksgiving, saying it puts a burden on families.
We really should be listening to the parents at Rawlings since they do so well with their children there. This is the school that began with year with 19% of third graders having ELA proficiency and went down to 7% at the Christmas break. How do you get worse? Are teachers teaching wrong? Let’s let the parents dictate how to do the calendar since they are so smart.
Parents have been asked many, many times. They don’t respond because they’re not involved. They’re not involved because they don’t want to be. Many of them can SEE the school from their own window yet won’t send their children to school if they simply don’t feel like getting them up. Children can be seen playing or riding their bikes across the street during the school day. They go up to the fence to talk to their friends on the school playground during recess. They come to school knowing as soon as they start a fight, throw some furniture, and cuss at some adults, they’ll get to stay home again the next day. The parents face no consequences so they continue to behave this way. The parents are smart enough to know no one can do anything about it. But obviously it must be the teachers teaching wrong.
That’s why I am asking why let these parents dictate the decisions. The board is elected to lead and do the right thing. Year round school is a good idea.