Where students go to school could change next school year as Alachua County Public Schools rezones to combat overcrowding. Parents and district officials weighed in Wednesday.
Members of the Alachua County School Board met with the community in a workshop meeting to discuss the county’s comprehensive rezoning plan and the proposed zoning lines for the 2024-2025 school year, which has been a contentious issue. The board focused its priorities on overcrowding in schools and diversity.
The district’s main objective is to align student enrollment with school capacity, Anntwanique Edwards, the School Board’s chief of equity, inclusion and community engagement, said. Rezoning is a problem the district has ignored for years, she said, and many of the schools have suffered from overcrowding.
“We know that there are a number of schools that have been over capacity in our district,” Edwards said. “We want to make sure that everyone recognizes that we're considering our current and projected enrollment for the school district, including active development in our communities, as a priority.”
About one-fourth of the county’s public schools are operating over capacity, with Newberry Elementary School operating at the highest enrollment rate of 141%, Edwards reported in her presentation.
With the goal of reducing expenses and increasing efficiency, the board focused on factors like transportation challenges, school capacity and magnet program enrollment during the meeting to make choices about where to redraw zone lines.
In her report, Edwards noted the cost of gas mileage, safe travel for students and efficiency of bus routes as transportation challenges.
The district also opted to maintain two-mile walkout zones, a zone within two miles of the school, for students that walk to school daily, she said.
One concern brought forward by board members and parents alike was the possibility of relocating students from their current school to their newly zoned school. For instance, students who are in fifth, eighth or 12th grade who have spent time in a certain school would be able to remain at that school, Edwards said, despite new zone lines.
Additionally, if a student in the current academic year attending a magnet program is affected by the change, she said they would not be removed from their program.
Edwards doesn't know the number of students who will be affected by the shift, she said.
Sarah Rockwell, the District 3 school board member, raised concerns about diversity. Some of the changes have the power to decrease diversity within schools, she said.
“When I look at changes, for instance, to the Talbot school zone, it appears as though the school is going to become less diverse,” she said. “When I look at changes to the Buchholz High School school zone, it appears that it's going to become less diverse.”
Making one district less diverse to create an easier bus route is not something she is in favor of, Rockwell said.
Rockwell also noted some safety concerns among the projected maps, stating some walks will become “treacherous.” Edwards said she can’t please every board member and their individual priorities.
“There has to be an overall overarching priority,” Edwards said. “I think at the end of the day, when we go to fix some of the things, for instance, that you have mentioned, Dr. Rockwell, I think that it will impact children in another place potentially.”
School board chair Tina Certain spoke briefly about the state of the district financially.
It’s difficult to put more students on buses because there’s a lack of drivers in Alachua, she said. Certain alluded to the current teacher shortage in Florida, emphasizing the difficulty of hiring teachers in poor schools.
Seventeen Alachua County schools are listed as "high priority" for focusing on teacher shortages by the Florida Department of Education.
“We're not able to do it because there are schools that are challenging to work in because we've concentrated them in poverty,” Certain said. “We put a lot of students in those schools and created high-need learning environments, and then we're not pulling the levers that we could pull to hire.”
Both Certain and Rockwell asked for more transparent data throughout the meeting. Both board members also pushed for multiple options to possibly solve the rezoning issues.
Edwards, while agreeing that more transparent data would be helpful, said it’s difficult to obtain because students are enrolling in schools year-round.
The meeting ended with several parental comments expressing concerns over walkable zones, special needs students who have difficulty dealing with change and students having to switch schools multiple times throughout their academic career.
Jonathan Yorkowitz, Alachua County resident, father of students who may be impacted by the zoning change and University of Florida interim dean of students, appreciated the variety of priorities on the issue. However, he said the board needs to narrow down its top priorities.
“If everything is a priority, then nothing is,” he said.
The next Alachua County School Board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sept. 19., and it will include the first reading of the proposed zones. On Oct. 17 at 4 p.m., the School Board will hold a public hearing on the proposed zones.
You can contact Ella @ethompson@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @elladeethompson.
Ella Thompson is a fourth-year journalism major and the Fall 2024 Digital Managing Editor. She was previously the Metro Editor at The Alligator and an intern at the Las Vegas Review-Journal covering education. In her free time, she likes to cook soup, read a good book and plan her next trip.
