What does the data tell us about the school rezoning plan?
ANALYSIS
BY TAYLOR GILFILLAN
We are one day away from the school board having to decide the fate of school rezoning (the meeting will be held on January 11 at 6 p.m.), and I still feel like I’m in the dark on what’s actually happening.
The data shared by the Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) administration has changed multiple times since the first August 16th workshop (covered here by Alachua Chronicle) and without much explanation why – or what – changed. This has been frustrating to follow.
To better understand for myself the big picture of what’s happening, I created an interactive data tool using the publicly released data the district has posted on the rezoning website. This is their data but shown in ways that hopefully answer more community questions and spark new ones. I shared this tool with the school board and district leadership on Monday.
Data tool is available to the public
Click here to view the data tool and look at before-and-after enrollment for any specific school (external link takes you to Tableau Public).
This tool was not sponsored, created, or endorsed by Alachua County Public Schools. I created this on my own because data on important issues should be easy to access and understand. Other than lengthy presentations and large separate data tables in PDF format on their website, I could not find any easily accessible way to draw connections between data sets.
The two main questions I visualized with the publicly released data are:
- How will rezoning impact school enrollment?
- How will rezoning impact school socio-economic diversity?
There are so many rezoning questions that are worth digging into, but these two were the ones most easily tackled given the data that was shared. These two questions also align to ACPS board policy 5120 as considerations for school zone rezoning and with the board’s priorities they shared in a May 2023 workshop.
Board Policy 5120 states, in no specific order, that school zone changes “may be justified after consideration by the Board of the following:
- financial and administrative efficiency
- school capacity and grade level capacity
- convenience of access to schools
- safe and efficient student transportation and travel
- effective and appropriate instructional programs
- socio-economic diversity in school enrollments with consideration of the equitable impact on student enrollment at each school
- utilization of existing school physical facilities.”
What is unclear is how ACPS Administration’s proposed rezoning plan addresses these priorities. The majority of board members emphasized financial efficiency as a priority in May 2023, but the district still has yet to release a budget impact analysis – we don’t know how much money will be saved by rezoning, if any at all.
Some Noticings from the Data
Below are a few observations I made from looking at the data in this new way. This is by no means exhaustive, and I’m sure community members will look at it through their own lens and see a different pattern, trend, or observation.
Noticing #1 – Outliers for over-capacity and under-capacity seem to be addressed, but 12 schools stay or become under-utilized (<75% enrollment), and 7 of the 8 most overcrowded schools remain the most overcrowded.
- 4 of the 5 most overcrowded schools remain the most overcrowded in the district (Newberry ES, Littlewood, Wiles, BHS).
- 15 of the 35 schools (43%) impacted by rezoning will be above 90% capacity, and 5 will remain above 100% capacity.
- 12 of the 35 schools (34%) impacted by rezoning will be below 75% capacity. Having under-utilized schools reduces financial efficiency for the school district, with the same amount of operating dollars being spent on fewer children.
- Schools that would be over 100% capacity next year:
- Littlewood – 112%
- BHS – 111%
- Newberry ES – 107%
- Wiles – 105%
- Chiles – 103%
Noticing #2 – The majority of schools see little to no change in student socio-economic diversity.
- Of schools above the district average for percent of students who are economically disadvantaged, all but one* (Terwilliger) stay the same. See note below on Mebane.
- Of this group, all but Terwilliger Elementary and Foster Elementary are schools in East Gainesville, Alachua, and Hawthorne.
*Mebane – I believe there is an error for their percent shown; nothing in the data or rezoning lines seems to explain this dramatic shift. I have not seen or heard an update from the school district, so I am sharing as-is from their publicly released data.
As shared earlier, these are things I see when I look at the data. I hope folks llook at it and see different observations that connect to their own community and their children’s experiences.
Unanswered Questions
Despite having new ways to look at what’s been publicly released, answers to several questions have not been shared with the public – and possibly not with the school board.
Some of those questions top of mind for me are:
- Is this a financially sound plan, and how do we know? The district has yet to release a budget impact analysis for rezoning.
- Is this our best rezoning option, and how do we know? What are other rezoning plan options we can see to either benchmark against or compare to?
Call to Action
While I don’t have children of my own yet, I share the same belief that I assume most of us do: every child in Alachua County – and everywhere – deserves an excellent school and learning environment. My concern as a community member is that the rezoning plan created by the ACPS administration does not address the stated goals of the school board, and there is insufficient evidence to show that it does. No matter how the board votes tomorrow night, I believe we need to continue to raise the bar for transparency and accountability for school district leaders around critical initiatives that will impact our children for years to come.
Taylor Gilfillan is the former Director of Data Analytics, Evaluation and Accountability for Alachua County Public Schools, and a current DAC member for the school district. He currently works in analytics for a national education nonprofit and is passionate about increasing data transparency and accessibility around important local and national issues.
I recently retired after 35 years teaching high school, 31 in Alachua County. Public education in the US is horribly, and in my opinion, irretrieviably broken. While I agree that the rezoning issue in Alachua County has been badly botched, the issues that impact student learning the most are the continual retirement or resignation of great teachers, the lack of meaningful discipline, and the out of control use of cell phones by students during class. Too many decisions are made by people with no expertise and more specifically common sense. I always advocated for public schools during my career but I understand now why the home school movement is growing. Many parents have no idea how chaotic classrooms are on a daily basis.
Thank you, Taylor, for contributing this analysis. You clarified and raised questions about the zoning debacle, but left me convinced that the socio/diversity/income/race issues are absolutely second to discipline, cell phones and micromanaging teachers. Put portables where the kids are, cut the outrageous misbehavior, and honestly tell the teachers what the curricula is and leave them alone. Many of us (retired) have taught classes of 35, dealt with political upheaval and ridiculous policies, etc., and watch in awe as supposed adults can’t figure out how to get a seat, behavior requirements, a curriculum and a teacher in front of our children.
Why can’t the school system get cell phones and behavior under control?
Have you tried to get a group of 35 teenagers to all put their phones away and listen to a lecture on the Kreb Cycle? While having no support for consequences from your school district who doesn’t want the discipline data to increase and the parents who don’t care and tell you that’s your job, not theirs? Teachers have no support when trying to enforce rules.
Please, Taylor and Alachua Chronicle, I know that there are many bigger things to worry about, but the culture that is collapsing around us depends on many little things, so please don’t forget the little detail that “data” are plural.
The answer is building new infrastructure not reassembling old broken pieces. Why has Alachua County not planned for growth and where are the tax dollars and the money from all of these new developments going? They are approving apartment complexes and commercial developments but can’t keep up with basic necessities. Seems like the citizens of Alachua County are being taken advantage of. Let’s be smarter. This should have been planned for years ago smh….
Truth.
Alachua County Schools doesn’t charge any development impact fees/taxes. I’m not sure why. This is the only county in Florida where we have lived that a new development doesn’t have to contribute to relieve the impact to schools. That’s a question everyone should be asking this school board and future candidates.
There’s been some fancy new high paying jobs created for friends of county employees. We’re back to the “good ol boys” system Boyd had years ago. All those new school board hires of district personnel are friends of people and have no idea how to do the jobs they were hired for. The people under them having been leaving. The SBAC is a complete mess.
Schools should be zoned by distance. Nobody cares about race. If they want to add a 2nd criterion after distance, they should add the Culture of the student, if that can be determined in a registration process. Each student follows a culture, even different from other family members. Race is certainly irrelevant these days.
“How will rezoning impact socio-economic diversity?”
How bout I simplify all their ‘data’. The average reading and math scores are at a third grade level for most of the culture that embraces a fatherless home. Rezoning isn’t going to do a damn thing to change that. However….when the culture of disruption is bused to a school with decent scores they will affect those students ability to learn in a chaotic classroom.
The data provides some insight about the school rezoning plan but it also speaks volumes about the ineptness, missed opportunities, and priorities of those leading the district.