School Board adopts proposed maps but postpones final decision on Irby Elementary

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the March 12 Special Meeting of the School Board of Alachua County, the board adopted the maps that were developed after the March 3 meeting but postponed a decision on closing Irby Elementary.

Public comment

During public comment at the beginning of the meeting, 37 people spoke about the rezoning plan, with 12 people objecting to the proposed closure of schools in east Gainesville, 10 people asking the board to pause, six people specifically objecting to a single K-8 school in Alachua, four people making comments about the proposed high school zones, three people objecting to the plan for multiple reasons, one person objecting to the closure of Stephen Foster Elementary, and one person favoring the plan.

Board discussion on maps developed in previous meetings

During the presentation, Director of FTE and State Reporting Kim Neal showed a slide that summarized the board’s previous discussion, which resulted in the maps shown in the link below.

Click here to see the boundary maps created after the March 3 meeting.

First motion

When the discussion moved to the board, Member Tina Certain made a motion to move forward with a different plan; her proposal was to leave Irby Elementary open as a PreK-5 for students south of U.S. Hwy 441 and consolidate Alachua Elementary with Mebane as a K-8 for students north of U.S. Hwy 441. The motion died without a second.

Second motion

Member Leanetta McNealy made a motion to pause the process; when Chair Thomas Vu said she needed to pick a date, she said she wanted to table the process for a year. Member Janine Plavac seconded the motion.

Rockwell’s argument

Member Sarah Rockwell said the district has not done a good job “of validating how emotional this process is for people and how important our schools are to us… A commenter said that we were making the decision that was easy and politically expedient, and I just want to say how completely false that is. This is the absolute hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life… This is far from politically expedient for me. I’m running for re-election, most of you might know that, and I am well aware that people who supported me in the past may not support me if I vote to move forward with any of the changes, and so if this was politically expedient, I would delay this for a year.”

Rockwell said costs are going up faster than state funding is increasing, and “our public schools, that are the foundation of our community, are being systematically dismantled and defunded.” She said she wants to invest in east Gainesville, “and the way we can do that is by consolidating schools.” She said Irby Elementary doesn’t have the capacity to be a preK-4 for the whole city, so it would have to be a preK-3, and she talked about why that transition in the middle of elementary school is not good for students or families.

Rockwell also said she could not, “in good conscience, divide the city of Alachua along 441 because that would create an effectively segregated elementary school experience and would also require a group of students who had been at a separate school to enter into an existing K-8 with a group of students who have established cliques and friendships and school culture, and then you have given half the city of Alachua the K-8 benefit, and the other half of them not.”

Rockwell talked about the threat of co-location, which would allow a charter school to move into any school with a certain amount of excess capacity, alongside the existing students. She said, “There is a definite financial impact of that, because the co-location is mostly at the district’s expense. So charter schools get the full funding per student, but the district is now covering part of their per-student cost, so the district is effectively getting double-charged for the same kids, which leaves us with even less money to serve our existing students.”

Rockwell concluded, “What is good for kids is to rezone, to consolidate schools, and to make sure that our kids in east Gainesville and in the city of Alachua have really amazing K-8 schools, instead of aging facilities that we are barely keeping up with maintenance on. I would probably have an easier time with my campaigning if I voted for this delay motion, but I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. And so I am against kicking the can. I am against delaying this another year when we’ve already delayed it for decades.”

Certain’s argument

Certain said, “There’s no plan that pleases everybody,” and she pointed out that the district has “to deal with the fact of the charter conversion [in Newberry], because… the public school still has to zone for and make provision for any student who is of school age and lives in the county… As a school board, we have a responsibility to make use of the resources we have been provided to provide the strongest possible academic programs for students, and that responsibility means we can’t simply maintain every facility as it exists today if enrollment no longer supports it.”

Certain continued, “So having a building open with a couple hundred students, I know that sounds like that’s the best way to go, but it’s been my experience [that] that has not served our students well… Over the years, I have advocated for children that look like me, and the community said, ‘All she’s concerned about are black kids.’ Well, I told them, yeah, if you have cancer, you want to treat the cancer first, because there’s some in our community who are healthy, and they’re doing fine, and they don’t have the challenges. So my focus has been on the students with the most needs… I want to be clear, this decision is not about abandoning any part of our county. Our goal is to ensure that schools serving east Gainesville, as well as Alachua, remain strong, stable, and able to provide programs that students deserve.”

Certain concluded, “Like Dr. Rockwell, I understand the emotion and the concern.” She said her daughter did “very well” when she was rezoned in elementary school, “and I am hopeful that all will go well with whatever the majority of the board decides.”

McNealy’s argument

McNealy spoke for over 30 minutes; she started by sharing comments from Williams Elementary students who want their school to stay open. She suggested bringing “specialized programs” into the under-enrolled schools and said students might return if that happens. She reviewed her time working for the district and said, “I’m saying all of this because it’s too important to sit here week after week, workshop after workshop, and not tell you some things about my passion, my feeling, and why it’s so important that not one school that we have indicated should be closed, but we can do better than that.” She also said she is not in favor of K-8 schools and argued for “operational efficiencies… Instead of immediate closures, my colleagues and I could adopt a three- to five-year stabilization plan with clear enrollment and financial benchmarks. I know we could do that.”

McNealy continued, “Our responsibility… is not only financial stewardship, but also protecting neighborhood schools and the stability that they provide for our families… If we do what I think some of my colleagues would want to do, we’re in trouble.”

Plavac’s argument

Plavac went through some financial irregularities she found through public records requests, arguing that the district is not fiscally responsible. She said that if the board decides to pause the effort, they should have much more public engagement. She also recommended waiting to see what would happen with charter school co-location: “I think we’re making decisions on what we don’t know… If we have, like Dr McNealy said, a time frame, and have it set on what we expect at a certain time, and the City and the County have committed to helping us with this and to participate in this, I think that that would be a great thing to do. And then if we all collaborate and say that this is what we decide, then everybody’s going to go away feeling good, instead of feeling like this place is divided.”

Amendment to the second motion

McNealy amended her motion to ask for the rezoning to come back in six months, and Plavac seconded the amendment. The amendment failed, 2-3, with only McNealy and Plavac voting in favor of the motion.

Vu’s argument

Vu said, “Everyone has a lot of really strong feelings. Even folks that have been really negative toward me… had some moments where we have found common ground… I do resent… the way our staff was treated at the joint City meeting… I also really resent a lot of the City folks, who are up for reelection now, commenting on this when it’s their decades-long policies that have devastated the east side, that have caused the problem that we’re in. It’s the same thing with the County Commission… There’s a reason I fought for the Hawthorne community to keep those schools open, because I thought it was really important to have them not lose anything else that they already lost. It just becomes another brick on this road of decades-long broken promises toward the east side of this county.”

Vu continued, “I really resent that the City of Gainesville is gonna come here and tell us how to do our business when they just spent almost $600,000 on 75 trash cans, right, when they cut RTS services and didn’t once consult us, because I had students that had to go to jobs after school, and they took RTS buses… We cannot build for capacity that is pie in the sky, of which there’s no paperwork, of which there’s no actual construction happening. Statutorily, we are not allowed to do that, so for the Mayor to tell us that we should have been considering these possibilities that may be happening 20 or 30 years from now, is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard, more ridiculous than the stuff that comes out of the Newberry City Commission.”

Vu continued, “I am not someone who’s going to sit here and try to quiet my passions for the sake of political expediency, for keeping allies or keeping political friends, because… I have made a promise to myself not to worry about being elected and always try to do the right thing.” He argued that both Williams Elementary and Lincoln Middle need renovation and said that Williams students “deserve something brand new to go to.” He also said the rezoning is necessary for fiscal responsibility

Vu concluded, “What other options do we really have right now? You can’t say you want to keep all the schools open, and you also then can’t complain that our schools are in bad shape. You can’t say that our teachers deserve more, but then also say, no, let’s just keep not finding any efficiency anywhere, and keep spending all this same money.”

McNealy’s motion failed, 2-3, with McNealy and Plavac in favor of the motion.

Third motion

Rockwell made a motion to adopt the maps that were developed after the March 3 meeting (see link above). Certain asked to amend the motion to keep Irby open and take more time to work on the plan for the city of Alachua, “because that’s a big change,… to close both of those schools.” Rockwell said she didn’t have a problem with that because the closure won’t go into effect until the fall of 2028.

The motion was clarified to adopt Middle School Map C, High School Map D, and Elementary Map D, but keep Irby open and bring back a plan for Alachua students at the May 5 meeting. Certain seconded the motion.

The motion passed 3-2, with McNealy and Plavac in dissent, and after a brief discussion, the board said the high school zoning changes will go into effect this fall.

Oak View portables

The last agenda item was to approve a contract for $7.5 million to relocate portables to the Oakview PreK-8, do any necessary construction for the Oak View PreK-4 Elementary School, and restore the field at Westwood Middle School where the portables now stand.

Certain made a motion to approve the contract, Rockwell seconded the motion, and the motion passed 3-2, with McNealy and Plavac in dissent.