Teachers, Families Fight to Keep Irby Elementary School Open

ALACHUA – A group of teachers, parents and community members in Alachua are pushing back against a proposal that could close Irby Elementary School, and they want the school board to hear them before it’s too late.

The Alachua County School Board is expected to vote on the school’s future at its May 5 meeting. The board will also hold a workshop April 29 to discuss the options ahead of that vote. For many in the Alachua community, those two dates feel like a closing window.

Irby Elementary, which currently serves pre-K through second grade students, was added to the district’s list of potential closures in February, just 10 days before the board held its initial vote on school consolidations across the county. Most other school closures being considered by the district had been announced months earlier, in November 2025.

For Lisi Osborne, who has taught at Irby since 2004, the timing felt rushed and the process has felt one-sided ever since.

“Irby faculty and staff heard about it on the news,” Osborne said. “This isn’t just a job. This isn’t just a place we come to every day to work. This is our home and this is our family.”

A hidden gem, advocates say

Osborne describes Irby as a school that is easy to overlook from the outside but hard to forget once you’ve walked its halls. Colorful sensory paths cover the floors. Murals line the walls throughout campus. The facilities, she said, are well-maintained and designed specifically with young children in mind.

“Irby Elementary is a hidden gem in the community of Alachua,” Osborne said. “It always has been. It is one of a kind.”

The school’s supporters have spent weeks building a case for keeping it open. Faculty and families have sent more than 200 emails to the school board. They have shared Google Maps comparisons of Irby’s campus alongside schools in Gainesville with the same floor plan that currently house pre-K through fifth grade students. They have submitted proposed classroom layouts to board member Dr. Sarah Rockwell showing how third and fourth grade could be added to the Irby campus without major new construction.

Their central argument: closing Irby isn’t necessary. The building can handle more students, and the community needs it.

The entire board has been invited to tour the campus and see it for themselves. So far, Rockwell is the only member who has accepted, spending several hours in Irby’s media center listening to staff concerns and reviewing the case for keeping the school open. Osborne said board members Janine Plavec and Dr. Leanetta McNeely have also been receptive and supportive throughout the process.

The district’s options

The district is weighing four options for Irby’s future. Three would allow the school to remain open, expanding from its current pre-K through second grade configuration to serve pre-K through fifth grade. The differences between those three options largely come down to how attendance zones would be drawn, specifically, how students on either side of U.S. Highway 441 would be divided between Irby and a newly renovated Mebane K-8 School.

The fourth option would close Irby entirely, consolidating its students into Mebane K-8 School alongside students from Alachua Elementary School, which is also slated to close in 2028.

The district’s push to consolidate schools is driven in part by state legislation passed in 2025 that allows charter schools to move into public school facilities operating below certain enrollment thresholds. Under that law, a district would be required to share its building with a charter school and help fund its operation, with no say in how it is run.

Dividing the community

Even among the options that would keep Irby open, Osborne and other community members have concerns. Several of the rezoning proposals would draw the attendance boundary along U.S. Highway 441, a line she says follows existing economic divisions in the city.

“There is more poverty and government housing on the north side of 441,” Osborne said. “This would divide our community even more.”

Osborne and other Irby advocates have proposed an alternative: keep all pre-K through fourth grade students together at Irby, with fifth graders transitioning to Mebane. That approach, they argue, would preserve the sense of community that has defined the Alachua school system for years while still addressing enrollment imbalances.

Parents have also raised concerns about young children being placed on a middle school campus. Several families have told Osborne they are already exploring private and charter school options if Irby closes.

“I fear that the board’s plan may hurt our already low enrollment even more,” she said.

Fears about what closure would mean

Osborne also questions the financial logic behind closing Irby. Consolidating students at Mebane would require building new facilities on its campus to house elementary students separately from the middle school population, a project the district says it plans to complete by August 2028. That construction cost, she argues, makes little sense when Irby’s building is already designed for and suited to elementary-age children.

“Closing Irby and building a new facility on Mebane’s campus will cost millions and millions of dollars when our district is in major debt already,” she said.

What comes next

The board will hold a workshop on April 29 at 10 a.m. before the final vote on May 5 at its 6 p.m. meeting. Osborne and other Irby supporters plan to be present and vocal at both.

She has taught at Irby for more than two decades. Her own children attended the school. That history, she said, makes it impossible to stay quiet while its future is being decided.

“We are pleading to the board to think about what would best benefit our community, our children and our families,” she said.

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