School Board of Alachua County hears from Parker Elementary parents about transportation issues, criticizes Rawlings Elementary turnaround plan

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their August 21 Regular Meeting, the School Board of Alachua County heard from Parker Elementary parents who are having trouble getting their children to school and criticized but approved a turnaround plan for Rawlings Elementary.

Superintendent Andrew asks for patience with new security measures

During his comments, Superintendent Shane Andrew asked parents to be patient with the new security measures: “We’re, of course, making sure that safety is our top priority as we welcome kids into our school, and then we work on the education piece, the love piece, feed them, nurture them in all kinds of ways, right? But Florida Statutes changed, and so the accessibility to our school sites may have changed, and we ask for your patience with that because it is our number one goal to make sure that our campuses are safe. So if you run into those additional safety measures when you come to our campuses, just know that it’s the state’s top priority, it’s our top priority, to ensure the safety of everyone on our campuses.”

Comprehensive rezoning update

Chief of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement Anntwanique Edward provided a detailed update on the comprehensive rezoning effort; the district committee has received a Scope of Work from two finalists for a consulting contract, and a recommendation for the contract is expected to come before the School Board on September 3. Edwards said the committee is asking for rezoning models “with a focus on socioeconomic diversity, transportation, and capacity, all of which would be further discussed in terms of fiscal responsibility.”

Parker Elementary transportation issues

During General Public Comment, the property manager at Residences of Oakview, also known as Horizon Sunset, spoke about the Transportation Department’s decision to stop providing courtesy buses to children who live within two miles of a school. The walking distance from the apartment complex to Parker Elementary is about 1.6 miles, and it requires young children to cross NW 13th Street.

The decision was announced last September and took effect on January 8, and the district said that parents could request transportation “if their student’s walk to school meets the state’s legal definition of a hazardous walking condition.” On January 16, Member Tina Certain requested a review of the policy, saying, “I think we need to look at the unintended consequences that we’re having on students that live within the two miles, especially young students trying to get there.”

The property manager said the children at the apartment complex “are being left behind. They don’t have a way to get to school. They come from marginalized communities, so for their parents to get up and walk them to school is – that’s a barrier… Some parents can’t get their kids to school.”

The Community Director for the apartment complex said the community has been speaking out about the issue since January 16, and “we still don’t have a clear path forward.” He said there are 55 children affected, 32 from his apartment complex and 18 from Campus Walk, and he said the Transportation Department reviewed those 55 names and “determined that they did not qualify for transportation, based upon the two-mile radius and not having a disability.” He said some of the students “suffer from these disabilities and have IEPs, but they’re being turned away.” He said one child didn’t go to school the first week because his mother is disabled, and other families “legitimately have to decide between being late for work or taking their child to school.”

The Community Director said there are more than 20 sexual offenders in a two-mile radius around Parker Elementary, and “that’s not including the transient sexual offenders… Even for the single mothers who are vulnerable, walking their children to school at 6 a.m. in the morning, that’s a risk for them that hasn’t really been considered.”

One mother said only two of the affected families have cars, “so the other women are trying their best to get their kids back and forth to school. I happen to be taking 11 of them; my car only fits seven.” She said one of the mothers is in a wheelchair and can’t get her child to school. She continued, “There’s no crossing guards. There’s no one to help make sure that those children are getting there safely. They’re leaving home in the dark.”

A second mother said she had to quit her job to make sure her kids get to school: “It’s a long walk. It’s very dangerous. It’s dangerous for me, it’s dangerous for them… [My kids] are small, they’re not even three feet tall… It’s just very dangerous.”

A third mother said her daughter is partially paralyzed and should not be expected “to walk with a cane from Horizon Sunset to Parker Elementary… I have made sacrifices, just to make sure she gets to school and picked up from school, and it’s very hard… 13th is very dangerous for our kids to wake up and have to walk, 6:30, 7:00 in the morning, to make it to school.”

A first-grade teacher at Parker Elementary said, “We have a very large population of students who are not getting to school… These are children who come from families that are already economically challenged.” She said parents broke down while talking to her at Meet the Teacher night because they don’t have a car, “so they have to take a bus and then walk several blocks, drop their child off, then walk several blocks back to a bus again or take an Uber and wait in a 20- to 30-minute car line to [pick up their child].” She said that last year, the school had 160 students riding seven buses, and this year there are still seven buses but only 45 children riding them. Because the school is a district ESOL school, “we drive them from Archer, from Waldo, from High Springs, but yet we can’t get students in our own community to school.” She said 11 students in her class are affected by losing bus service: “We’re adding another barrier.”

Chair Diyonne McGraw thanked the parents and said, “All of these will be passed on to the appropriate party to follow up with you all.”

Rawlings Elementary turnaround plan

During a discussion about a district-managed turnaround plan for Rawlings Elementary, which earned a school grade of D two years in a row, Member Kay Abbitt made a motion to approve the plan, and the motion was seconded by Member Leanetta McNealy.

However, Abbitt pointed out that the percentage of proficient students declined last year in every subgroup (see table below), “so whatever was done at Rawlings last year needs to be completely obliterated, because nothing is working there.” She said she supported the year-round model that is currently in effect at Rawlings, but she had also recommended adding extra hours to the school day and hiring more certified teachers; she recommended incentivizing teachers to work at Rawlings.

Abbitt asked, “How many more years are we going to go on and let those kids continue to get a subpar education?” She said some of the recommendations in the plan were implemented last year, “so what is going to be done differently?”

Abbitt said the plan calls for analyzing data to get to the root cause of low performance: “Well, they don’t have foundational skills. If they had the foundational skills, they’d be able to function more proficiently at grade level.”

Abbitt continued, “It says ‘Rigorous walkthroughs.’ We’ve been having walkthroughs. I’ve done walkthroughs. And look – everything’s down. Every grade is down. So are the walkthroughs working?… I don’t see anything different in here… There’s no way that I could vote to approve this like this, because I don’t see that it is going to make any difference for the kids.”

Member Sarah Rockwell said she shared a lot of Abbitt’s concerns but also pointed out that even if the school grade comes up to a C, “if the performance of students with disabilities does not improve, they’ll be in the same turnaround position… and all I can say is, this is appalling – to have performance levels for our students with disabilities in ELA and math of 3% proficiency is absolutely heartbreaking, appalling… That’s a reflection of our failure to provide the level of service they need.”

Rockwell agreed that the district needs to provide more certified teachers to Rawlings, but she disagreed with Abbitt’s recommendation to move coaches into the classroom, saying the district has certified teachers who do not have much experience and need the coaching. She concluded, “We have to make a big change [at Rawlings], not little changes.”

School Improvement Principal Jim Kuhn said, “No one at Rawlings is excited about what happened,” but he listed some things that have changed: “They’re fully staffed, which is fantastic. They were not fully staffed last year… They have really and truly bought into the plan that Dr. [Stella] Arduser and her team have put together… They’re all excited about being there.”

He said the school has four fully-certified ESE teachers and one who is pending certification, and there are no plans to put teachers into classrooms because they are fully staffed.

McNealy said she had confidence that staff would turn the school around and added that she supported incentivizing teachers, but “that’s a collective bargaining issue, and I will not get into that tonight… I’d like to be recommending that in a meeting where we can talk about that.” Addressing parents, she said, “You are going to have to be involved, and it cannot just be the school, okay?”

Certain said she had met with Kuhn earlier in the day and had similar comments to those from Abbitt. She said schools need to be more honest with parents about how few students are proficient and added that she had previously warned that the Early Learning Center was “a diversion of resources, and we need those resources for K-5 because that’s where our charge is right now.” For example, she said, the district needs to find a way to pay for transportation for the Parker Elementary students.

The motion to approve the turnaround plan passed 4-1, with Abbitt in dissent.

Board Requests

After unanimously approving School Resource Officer agreements with the City of Alachua, City of High Springs, City of Gainesville, and Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, the board moved on to Board Requests.

Abbitt asked staff to send her information about how many students from the Williams Elementary magnet program transferred to their zoned schools or to a private school.

Andrew responded that he would send her that information; official counts for the first fall survey will be taken on August 23, but the current total of enrolled students is 25,925. According to the Florida Department of Education, the district’s enrollment was 27,441 in the second fall survey of 2019-20, and it was 26,264 in 2023-24.

Rockwell said she was concerned that some students enrolled at Parker Elementary “have not been able to get there due to transportation barriers… If we don’t get those kids to school in the next two days, we’re not getting FTE funding for them. So my request is – we figure out something… We need them in school, period, but especially if we can get them there before the end of the 10-day count so that they get their funding as well.”

Both Rockwell and Certain asked staff to look into the Parker Elementary teacher’s report that the buses are not full, and Certain asked for enrollment data by school. She added a request for an additional budget workshop: “I think we, as a board, need to sit down, and the superintendent [can] bring us some strategies that are going to be employed to deal with the negative impact of potentially a large decrease in our [enrollment].”

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