The Leon County School District will be going before the Florida Board of Education Wednesday to seek final approval of its turnaround plan for Apalachee Elementary, which has been a D school for the past two consecutive years.
The meeting will be held at 10 a.m. at the Caribe Royal Orlando resort. It will be livestreamed on the Florida Channel. At the meeting, the district will be presenting a final draft of its turnaround plan for the school, which will include an emphasis on reviewing lesson plans and frequent progress monitoring of student data.
“The school was just one point away from becoming a C,” Assistant Superintendent Shane Syfrett told the Tallahassee Democrat in reference to the school’s 2023-24 grade.
According to state data, the school improved its grade by nine points placing it one point below the C threshold. Nonetheless, the school has reached tier-two status, meaning it has maintained a poor grade for the second year in a row, and therefore needs additional support and oversight from both the district and the state. The district must now prepare to submit quarterly data to the DOE for this school year.
As a tier-two school, the state allocates additional dollars to the school to support the implementation of the turnaround plan.
If the school fails to exit D status, it will be placed on tier-three status and the district will be presented three options: designate it a charter school, turn operations over to a private company, or close its doors. Furthermore, the school’s principal, Pam Hightower, will be ousted if the school doesn’t make a C.
State data shows the school’s poorest performance was on the third-grade English language arts exam, an integral test that helps predict future graduation patterns. Syfrett suggested the low scores were due to not enough teachers and a lack of intervention plans.
During a previous state board of education meeting, Leon Superintendent Rocky Hanna and other superintendents from across the state were asked to present an overview of turnaround plans to the board.
When asked by state board chair Ben Gibson what the root cause was for the underperformance at Apalachee, Hanna said the school was facing a severe teacher shortage.
“We are fully staffed this year, but last year it was not fully staffed. There were a number of teachers that were not in place at the beginning of the school year,” Hanna told the state panel during a meeting on Oct. 15.
State board members expressed concerns over a lack of accountability from Hanna regarding the school’s status.
“At the end of the day, I own everything that happens in this district, the good and the bad,” Hanna said.
The state panel is requiring the school district to start a teacher apprenticeship program possibly in partnership with Tallahassee State College, Florida State University, and Florida A&M University, to help recruit qualified teachers.
Apalachee is one of three D-grade schools in Leon County. The other two are Sabal Palm Elementary and Ft. Braden K-8 school, which just dropped to a D this past school year.
Syfrett said the district is looking to improve all three schools but is prioritizing Apalachee because of its tier-two status.
Apalachee has about 477 students, the majority of whom come from low-income households, marking Title I status. Located at 650 Trojan Trail, it is the first magnet elementary school in the district with a focus on the arts.
District and school site administrators are prioritizing an increase in proficiency levels across all grades and subjects by implementing effective lesson planning and recruiting highly qualified educators.
Apalachee students with disabilities showed the greatest decline, according to state data. None of the students in that subgroup showed proficiency on any exam. Syfrett said one of the many teacher vacancies at the school last year was in the ESE department, which contributed to the lack of gains in the subgroup. The school is fully staffed this year.
“When students have learning disabilities, you have to come up with different strategies to help bridge that gap to get through with the learning process,” Syfrett said. He said the district will be connecting with teachers in the ESE department to strategize and enhance innovative lesson planning to ensure student progress.
Despite the dismal reading scores, students showed the most improvement in math and fifth grade science. Fifth graders improved by 7% in science, and fourth graders pulled in a gain of 21% proficiency in math.
Alaijah Brown covers children & families for the Tallahassee Democrat. She can be reached atABrown1@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter/X:@AlaijahBrown3.
