Emotional Debate Ends With 3-2 School Vote
ALACHUA COUNTY – After months of community workshops and competing options, the Alachua County School Board voted 3-2 on May 5 to keep Irby Elementary School as a Pre-K through second grade campus and expand Mebane Middle School into a grades 3 through 8 school serving the entire Alachua zone.
Board member Dr. Sarah Rockwell made the motion. Board Chair Thomas Vu seconded it after no other board member did so initially.
The motion passed with Vu, Rockwell and board member Tina Certain in favor. Vice Chair Dr. Leanetta McNealy and board member Janine Plavac dissented.
Community Voices
The community had made its feelings clear before the board even voted.
Evelyn Fox, president of the Alachua County NAACP, called on the board to slow the process and said residents were not satisfied with how the restructuring had been handled. She noted that local government officials had also asked the board to pause, and that the NAACP had scheduled a meeting with outside experts to review claims made during prior board sessions about conditions at Williams Elementary.
Alachua City Commissioner Jackson Youmas urged the board to take the emotional and mental health dimensions of school rezoning seriously, noting that being reassigned away from a school can leave a lasting mark on a child regardless of how successful that child later becomes.
Former Alachua City Commissioner Dayna Williams, appearing as a private citizen, said consolidating schools would not address the underlying reasons families are leaving the district for private and charter options and could accelerate that trend. She also questioned whether the concurrency growth figures in the district’s presentation were tied to a specific year, saying the timeline was not clear in the materials shown to the public.
Irby staff member Shay Bellamy-Fultz challenged the district’s process directly, questioning why a traffic assessment at Irby had only been attempted the day of the meeting and had not been conducted at Mebane when Irby’s closure was being considered. She also questioned how staff could cite potential roadway improvements as a site concern without a completed traffic study to back it up.
School board candidate Jancy Vinson raised concerns about what she described as teacher terminations, including of a teacher on maternity leave, following the earlier school closure announcements. The board took no action on those personnel matters during the meeting.
The Options on the Table
The vote came after a detailed presentation from district enrollment director Kim Neal on two options that had survived an April 29 workshop.
Option 1 would have divided the Alachua zone along U.S, Highway 441, sending students south of the highway to a Pre-K through 5 Irby and students to the north to a Pre-K through 8 Mebane, at an estimated cost of $65 million. Under that scenario, Irby’s projected attendance would be approximately 539 students and Mebane’s would be approximately 1,029.
Option 2 would have kept all Alachua-zone students together at Irby for grades Pre-K through 4 before moving them to Mebane for grades 5 through 8, at a projected cost of $78 million.
Option 2 effectively collapsed between the workshop and Tuesday’s meeting. Neal told the board that accounting for approved concurrency developments, Irby would need to accommodate approximately 865 students under that plan, more than doubling its current enrollment and making it one of the largest elementary schools in the county on one of the district’s smaller properties.
Superintendent Dr. Kamela Patton noted that Option 2 would require nine additional school buses, a larger bus loop, more parking, and storm water management facilities the site may not be able to support. If storm water requirements could not be met, she said, the project could be stopped entirely. She also cautioned that once Alachua grows and fourth grade is packed in, the district could face pressure to move fourth grade back to Mebane, effectively returning to a Pre-K through 3 configuration and starting the cycle over again.
The Board Debates
McNealy pushed back forcefully against what she called an unnecessary retreat from the Pre-K through 4 framework that three board members had supported at the April 29 workshop. She argued the site concerns raised by staff, while real, were not insurmountable, and urged her colleagues not to place third and fourth grade students in a middle school environment.
“Please do not divide the Alachua community, families and students into divisional pieces,” McNealy said. “They don’t deserve it.”
Rockwell said she had done her own calculations before the meeting and concluded that keeping Irby as a Pre-K through 2 campus could absorb projected growth without a major new building. She said she could not support a plan that risked being shut down mid-construction.
“I don’t want our students to lose their PE field,” Rockwell said. She added that she had confirmed with Neal that the Pre-K through 2 model could work within the existing footprint before making her motion. Neal confirmed that Irby’s projected attendance would reach approximately 565 students with concurrency growth included, putting it at roughly 108 percent of its 525-seat capacity. She said the roughly 40-student overage could potentially be addressed with portable classrooms rather than new construction.
Certain said she had favored Option 1 throughout the process, citing the superintendent’s recommendation and the educational value of keeping a standard Pre-K through 5 configuration at Irby. She said a Pre-K through 2 model creates a transition right before third grade, a point when many students are being evaluated for special education services, and that moving students again before sixth grade compounds the disruption. She ultimately concluded that getting a workable resolution on record was necessary so staff could begin preparing for the coming school year.
Plavac suggested a different path entirely, proposing the board reverse the planned closure of Alachua Elementary and leave the schools largely as they are while staff assesses what renovations would be needed. She argued the community wanted stability and that the board should not force a change if the justification remained unsettled.
Vu said his overriding concern throughout had been preserving community cohesion in Alachua. He said keeping the entire zone together at Irby and Mebane, rather than dividing along State Road 441, best served that goal. He said the status quo was not viable, noting that the Alachua-Irby combination has remained in fragile standing with the state and that teachers at struggling schools can face forced reassignments under state mandates with little notice.
“Going 3 through 8 to Mebane and consolidating there removes a transition that would allow more continuity of education,” Vu said. “Ultimately, we need to do what’s best for kids academically.”
What Comes Next
The Tuesday vote builds on a broader restructuring plan the board approved in March that includes closing Stephen Foster, Alachua and Williams elementary schools and expanding Lincoln and Oak View into Pre-K through 8 configurations.
Foster closes at the end of this school year. Alachua Elementary and Williams are projected to close by the end of the 2027-28 school year. New attendance boundaries take effect Aug. 10, 2026.
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