Split school board postpones decision on rezoning to mid-January

BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At last night’s Public Hearing on the latest version of the school rezoning maps, the board heard public comment on the latest boundary maps and voted to postpone the second reading on the rezoning until mid-January. Three board members appeared hesitant about moving forward with the rezoning, while two members were adamant that it is necessary.
Chair McGraw opened the meeting by saying they would not be dialoguing with the public, but added, “We hear you. We’ve heard you. We received numerous emails, and I don’t want anybody to think that we’re not listening as your board.”
The latest maps, released on October 31, included the following changes to elementary zones:
- Rock Creek Subdivision – The full subdivision is now included in the rezoning to Glen Springs (from the current Littlewood zone)
- An area in Gainesville located north and east of Highway 441 (including Whitney Mobile Home Park) that was slated to change from Talbot to Foster will remain zoned to Talbot
- An area north of 39th Ave. (Summer Creek, Greystone) has been zoned back to Meadowbrook due to the traffic configuration. Huntington has not been included in this change because of the access to the NW 51st St. traffic light and therefore is still slated to be rezoned to Talbot.
- The area south of NW 23rd Ave., north of Newberry Rd., and west of NW 51st St., including but not limited to Kingswood, Boardwalk, West Park, West Hills, Park Avenue, Blakemeade, Pinewoods, Campo Verde, University Acres, Shenandoah—This area is currently zoned to Meadowbrook or Terwilliger and was slated to move to Littlewood or Glen Springs, but will now remain in or be assigned to Meadowbrook.
- The area located south of SW 8th Avenue (Cobblefield) with access to Chiles will remain at Chiles.
During public comment, at least five families from Suburban Heights, including one eight-year-old student, spoke in favor of keeping Suburban Heights at Littlewood; they are currently slated to be rezoned to Glen Springs, which is much further from their neighborhood. A parent from Huntington advocated for staying at Meadowbrook instead of moving to Talbot, and a Kingswood parent advocated for staying at Littlewood instead of moving to Meadowbrook. Other parents spoke about individual circumstances, from services to travel times, and asked to stay at their current schools.
Several parents spoke about how disruptive COVID had been for younger elementary students and asked the board to not disrupt their children again.
Rescheduling the second reading
Following public comment, Staff Attorney Susan Seigle reminded McGraw that the second reading of the rezoning plan was scheduled for December 5, but board members at the October 17 meeting indicated that they’d like to push the second reading to January but didn’t vote on that.
Board Member Tina Certain made a motion to have the second reading in January; it has to be held by January 15, but the board decided not to select a specific date until the December 5 meeting. The motion passed unanimously.
Conflict over continuing to adjust boundaries vs. freezing them to calculate budgetary impact
McGraw thanked everyone for coming to the meeting and said the meeting was adjourned, but Certain said she still had a question, so the meeting continued. Certain said she was concerned about schools that will still be over 90% capacity after rezoning and asked Dr. Anntwanique Edwards, who has led the rezoning effort, whether her staff will be doing additional work to alleviate that.
Edwards said her staff has been collecting the emails, phone calls, and data information that has been received from community input, “however, we are not at a point where we will continue to make changes right now because in order for us to do budgetary impact–if we continue to change zone lines and where kids are, we cannot provide the budgetary impact of what it will cost for transportation… For our staff to be able to do the budgetary impact and financial impact, we need to have stagnant data.”
Edwards said she is aware of concerns from families being moved out of Littlewood, along with the Huntington neighborhood and the Newberry community. She said they don’t want to “ping pong” families back and forth between schools and that they needed to put together the financial impact of the changes “in order for [the board] to meet this deadline… We don’t have time on our side to continue to make the changes and those adjustments and get it to everybody and also meet the deadline of December 5 or January. So that is why we have ceased making changes at this point.”
Certain said she was “kind of in a quandary” because Edwards had previously said her staff wasn’t “pursuing the racial diversity or economic diversity, right? So I was under the impression that the only issue you seemed to be addressing was capacity.”
McGraw stopped her, saying the purpose of the meeting was to get public input and that they could have a board discussion on the rezoning on December 5.
Certain: “I have a lot of questions; you don’t have answers”
Certain continued to ask Edwards about any plans to make changes to the current zoning boundaries, and Edwards responded, “So what we’re trying to do at this point in time is to leave the maps as they are, show what the impact is, and it may be that the board would say, ‘This is not sufficient.’ It may be that the board says that we need to take into consideration several other pieces, but what we focused on was looking at capacity. As one of the members of the community said, we do have more schools that are considered overcrowded, but we have less schools that are considered over capacity.”
Certain said, “I have a lot of questions; you don’t have answers, so I’ll just leave it at that.”
Andrew said that if they kept adjusting the boundaries until December 20, it wouldn’t be fair to the Transportation team to have to work over the holiday break to determine the financial impacts of those maps: “Continuing to make adjustments and tweaks eliminate the ability within that time crunch to have the financial impact and costs available.” He said if the board provided direction to continue making adjustments, “then I just want everyone to understand that financial impact and analysis can’t be done, not because we’re unable to do it but because time doesn’t permit.”
Abbitt: Finish the rezoning first, then calculate the financial impact
Member Kay Abbitt said she didn’t understand what benefit there would be to “knowing the financial impact if we’re still going to continue making changes to rezoning, so to me, it makes infinitely more sense to finish how we’re gonna get the rezoning, then look at the financial impact, see if it’s something we can live with or not, and then make decisions about how we’re going to move forward. But sitting here stagnant for two weeks, a month, a month and a half, coming back with the same data because–I’m not good with this at all.”
Abbitt said she couldn’t fathom moving a student from a school where they can walk to school to a place where they need a bus when the district already has transportation issues.
Rockwell: Why push the second reading to January if the maps won’t be updated?
Member Sarah Rockwell said she agreed with much of what Abbitt said and added, “Why did we just vote to push this back a month if we’re not going to do additional work to address some of the concerns we have with the zone lines during that month?” Rockwell said there should have been data modeling of the financial impact and transportation impact throughout the whole process: “Every iteration of these maps should have had data modeling and estimations.” She said the district should have collaborated with the university to develop those models and added, “I really don’t understand the reasoning behind, ‘Well, we’ve pushed out our timeline a month, but we’re not going to do any additional work in that month.’ It doesn’t make sense to me.”
McNealy: “We are not thoroughly ready… I’m not in favor”
Member Leanetta McNealy said she asked at the last meeting to “pause” the rezoning, and “now I’m saying we are not thoroughly ready.” She asked the attorney for clarification on the schedule, and Seigle said that if they go past January 15 for the second reading, they’ll have to re-advertise the rezoning, which will start another 90-day period. That would go into April and would make it difficult to have the new zones ready for the 2024-25 school year.
Andrew said they were trying to get the rezoning done before “magnet season,” which is in January and February.
McNealy said, “My opinion is that not only should we be pausing, I don’t think we are ready for the 24-25 school year, and I’m gonna end it with that… I’m not in favor.”
Certain: “My colleagues, I tell you, this has to be done.”
Certain said she hoped staff would continue to work on the maps because there are issues that need to be addressed: “My colleagues, I tell you, this has to be done.”
Edwards said it is difficult to do comprehensive rezoning within a school year, and some districts take more time to do it. She said that addressing capacity issues requires shifting students from the “west to the east and the east to the west, in many cases,” which increases transportation costs and increases parent concern over safety and other issues. She said her staff has a list of changes that need to be made to the maps, and they can do that, but “what I think will be very difficult is for us to have complete capacity without impacting simultaneously the economic balance for schools and addressing the transportation costs. That is why in previous conversations we were asking which things needed to be the number one, number two ranked priorities as we did comprehensive rezoning, because all of the things are in the policy, but they cannot all be addressed simultaneously and meet the needs of each one.”
Rockwell: “We cannot continue to kick the can”
Rockwell said, “We cannot continue to kick the can, and my biggest concern with the word ‘pause’ is when you pause something, it doesn’t move forward anymore… We cannot afford to pause from here until January, and the product we get and the data we get is completely unacceptable.” She said that if they needed to extend the deadline, they would, but she would be “very disappointed” about that because there are schools where classes are over class size limits but there is no space for an additional class, and there are schools where students eat lunch at 9:15 a.m. “I don’t want to extend the deadline. But if we have to, we have to.”
McGraw said the rezoning would not be an issue “if we had addressed the achievement gap a long time ago… Parents want their kid safe and they want to know that their kids are getting a quality education. And because we have not addressed that for so long, that’s why your zoning is an issue… We’re just not ready… I’m not going to upset the community when we don’t have all of what we need in order… In our district, your achievement gap needs to be addressed, and that’s along with behavior… Until we address the achievement gape, until you address the behavior, zoning is a third issue to me.” She thanked everyone for coming and adjourned the meeting.
I’m not sure who is dumber, board members or the staff. Also I wish writers would learn when to use farther and when to use further.
Good grief…
WTF with that mask? Pigs on the wing…that’s mental illness. Wacko Sako on the GNV CC wears one too.
It’s the commi flag.
A picture paints a thousand words… fear, control, no faith in god.
Rockwell & Sako “need to move forward”
and ditch the mask. They are paused in Covid. “ She’s wearing that mask to protect you, you wear the mask to protect her” ? Idiocy.
Marxist commi, left brain, control freak, idiocy.
Agree. I thought this must be a stock photo. Pathetic.
This is a picture from the video of this week’s meeting.
All the problems in Gainesville and Alachua County, yet your colons fall out when you see a mask. Who. Cares.
Put your mask on Joe and be a super hero. Go to your safeplace.
What they did to the children with their Covid lockdown & masks was child abuse. Leave them kids alone!
The mask represents either mental illness or ignorance – neither are good qualities possessed by those tasked with the education of our youth.
Chronic masks wearing is a good indicator of a persons mental faculties. I love that we can easily identify and avoid those who are lost beyond all hope.
JENNIFER, does AC have any pics of Rockwell without the face diaper you could print on these SB articles?
If ignorance is bliss, you dummies are in heaven.
“By Mayo Clinic Staff
Can face masks help slow the spread of the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)?
Yes. When used with measures such as getting vaccinated, hand-washing and physical distancing, wearing a face mask slows how quickly the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends wearing masks if you choose to, and in specific places and situations.
In areas that have many people with COVID-19 in the hospital, the CDC recommends wearing a face mask indoors in public.
The CDC says that you should wear the most protective mask that you’ll wear regularly, fits well and is comfortable….”
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-mask/art-20485449
Vaccines?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10492612/#:~:text=The%20odds%20ratio%20(OR)%20for,to%20die%20from%20COVID%2D19.
I must admit that your faith in government puts the faith of most religious folks to shame.
Slice, I follow data – see above – and personal accounts of experts – 2 of my clients were docs on the front lines of Covid during the Delta variant. One in the Shands ER, the other in the ICU in Lake City. Most of their patients – some dying – were MAGA who were not vaxxed. That confirms the data you want to ignore because …… some politicians and a handful of quacks told you to?
Bless your heart
You’ve previously said that you’re twice my age…but yet you exude the wisdom of my very young children
Here’s the current scoreboard.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status
Listen, by now basically every sane person knows that the Covid shot was not beneficial. Fake stats don’t change the facts that we’ve all witnessed.
And to use terms like “scoreboard” to describe human deaths is disgusting.
Dude, you have nothing to base your idiocy on, and you should ask my 2 docs who were up to their armpits in Covid patients if they “know” what you think you know. They were on the front lines and confirm what all the data says – the unvaxxed have led in new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths since the outbreak (Jazzman points to the scoreboard). It’s not a plot to steal your precious freedom to be an epidemic disease carrier.
Doubt
Jazzman’s reeling….
Pharma pushers have gradually morphed in to complete psychopaths. We all know what’s happening and ain’t nothing you can say to reel us back in to your cult. Keep simpin aszhole…
Look at that liberal with mask blazing running alachua county schools…. Wow