The School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) unexpectedly nixed Rawlings Elementary School’s year-round school program during a regular meeting on Tuesday night. 

Rawlings was on the meeting agenda for approval of its calendar for the 2025-26 school year, but staff brought an extra presentation with details on the new calendar’s impact after its first year. 

Jim Kuhn, principal for K-12 school improvement, presented an update on Rawlings’ progress in its first year as a year-round school. He said total enrollment at Rawlings has dropped 19-20% in the last year, with a total of 233 students leaving the school, though only 181 of them stayed in the county and 54 of those were fifth graders. 

Attendance at the school has averaged around 89% since the year-round schedule was implemented, but projections for students to learn their educational materials at the necessary pace are significantly lower. 

At Rawlings, 32% of first graders are expected to earn a Level 3 or higher on the third English Language Arts (ELA) progress monitoring exam in 2025, and only 16% are expected to earn that level on math. 

Eighteen percent of second graders are expected to reach a 3+ on ELA, and 13% on math. For third grade, 26% are expected to reach that level on ELA, and 16% on math. 

No fourth graders are expected to meet the 3+ benchmark on either ELA or math. 

Twenty-two percent of fifth graders are expected to reach 3+ on ELA, and 15% on math. 

Kuhn also presented the results of a staff survey completed on Feb. 1, and a parent survey completed in April. 

When asked if they believed the year-round model positively impacted student achievement and learning, 42% of parents agreed or strongly agreed, and another 42% were neutral, while the rest disagreed or strongly disagreed. 

On the staff survey, for which Kuhn noted that 44% of Rawlings teachers are first-year teachers, 58% agreed or strongly agreed that the model positively impacted student achievement and learning, while 32% were neutral and 10% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 

Rawlings has spent the last year on a modified schedule after the state enacted a law establishing a pilot program to give year-round schooling a trial run. 

The state chose five school districts for the pilot program, including Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS), which applied to run the program at both Metcalfe and Rawlings Elementary Schools, but after pushback from some board members, parents and teachers, ACPS requested to remove Metcalfe from the pilot program before it began. 

Board members and district staff hoped Metcalfe would act as an alternative option for Rawlings families who did not want to switch to year-round schooling. According to Kuhn’s presentation, 41 of the students who left in the first year transferred to Metcalfe. 

After Kuhn finished his presentation, Board Member Tina Certain made a motion to discontinue the year-round pilot program at Rawlings. Board Member Thomas Vu seconded the motion and said if Certain had not made the motion first, he would have. 

Vu said the number of families who have left or are planning to leave Rawlings is a bad sign for its success, as is the low proficiency projections. He also said getting Rawlings back on the same schedule as everyone else would help focus resources on classrooms and teachers. 

Certain agreed that Rawlings needs to be in alignment to help the district as a whole get into alignment with itself, but she also said ACPS’s dive into the pilot program felt rushed to her, and the program was not implemented with a plan that would actually help make a change at the school. 

“I’m just gonna be straight-up, I don’t see anything that our staff is doing at Rawlings now that’s any different from showing up at a [school improvement] meeting when I started attending these meetings in [the 2019-20 school year],” Certain said. 

P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School is also participating in the pilot program, but requested to delay its first year using a new schedule until the 2025-26 school year, giving itself a full school year to prepare. 

Board Chair Sarah Rockwell said ACPS should have done something similar to P.K. Yonge if it wanted the program to be successful. She also complained that how the state has set up the calendar does not actually fit with the purpose of year-round school. 

Year-round school is meant to reduce learning loss over a long summer break, by splitting students’ time off into smaller breaks throughout the year, but Rockwell pointed out that the calendar still has a lengthy summer break built in. 

Rockwell said she appreciates the school staff’s effort to make the year-round calendar work, but that the effort could be better used on improving instructional work and curriculum. 

“Part of me wants to see more data and give it [another] year,” Rockwell said. “But at the same time, I know that we don’t have an actual year-round model here. We have a pretend year-round model.” 

Florida Statute 1003.07 established the pilot program as a four-year endeavor, after which the Florida Department of Education will assess the program’s successes and failures to inform a recommendation to the governor and Florida Legislature about possible expansion of the program. 

F.S. 1003.07 is silent on the districts’ ability to withdraw from the program ahead of the four-year mark. 

School Board Member Janine Plavac, who was appointed to finish Kay Abbitt’s term last week and sworn in on Monday, joined the board for her first meeting on Tuesday. She said though she was not familiar with why Rawlings was on a year-round calendar, the students were “set up for failure” in a school with 44% first-year teachers. 

Plavac said the presentation concerned her because many of the parents were neutral on questions. She said the parents must be engaged in order for their children to attend and engage in school. 

“I’m not looking at the finances. I’m looking at, we’ve got to have the kids want to be there,” Plavac said. 

Plavac was one of several board members to also point to the 41 students who moved to Metcalfe in order to avoid the year-round shift. Vu took it a step further, saying all 131 students who left the school did not want to be there, and another 30% plan to leave next year. 

Board Member Leanetta McNealy said one year into the program is far too early to call it quits. She acknowledged that Rawlings has lost students, but said ACPS has lost students all over the county for a variety of reasons. 

“I cannot believe that at any other school in this district, whether it’s west or east, that we would be saying now, not even a year: discontinued,” McNealy said. 

Certain’s motion passed 3-2, with McNealy and Plavac dissenting. Plavac asked initially to abstain, but after learning she had to vote, she said she would throw her lot in with McNealy because “there’s good and bad” to the cancellation of the program. 

ICE Policy 

The meeting was also marked at its start by a crowd of community members with T-shirts and pins declaring their support of immigrants. The commenters came to demand further clarity and stronger policies addressing the possibility of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers entering schools and removing students. 

When the Department of Homeland Security altered its policies in January to allow law enforcement into “sensitive” areas such as schools and churches, ACPS responded with a Feb. 10 memo directing school administration on how to interact with law enforcement if ICE enters the school. 

The memo advises that ICE has broad authority and can remove and interview students with or without a warrant– which commenters at Tuesday’s meeting said violates students’ Fourth Amendment rights and their right to education. 

Many commenters turned up at the school board’s March 12 meeting to ask for a clearer policy, and to demand that ACPS come up with stricter requirements for ICE agents if they try to enter a school. After seeing no change, commenters showed up with the same T-shirts and buttons on Tuesday to push the board again. 

“I am a little surprised. I came here and didn’t know that you guys already agree with Governor DeSantis to do something that is blatantly illegal,” said commenter Denise Mendez, who said she is a former immigration law attorney. “You are literally the last line of defense that these children have before they are snatched from their families, taken away into jails without notifying family members.” 

Commenters also said a constant fear that ICE may come and take a student could leave students with trauma, and could damage their learning, if they are unable to focus because of the environment. 

The board made no response to the group.