Alachua County Public Schools

Public schools in Alachua County were racially segregated from the end of Reconstruction in 1877. In response to the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, the Alachua County Public Schools Board was ordered by the courts to operate a freedom of choice system starting in 1964, when there were eleven all-black schools in the district. In 1969 there were still eight all-black and three all-white schools in the district. That year the U.S. Supreme Court decided, in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, that public schools must be immediately fully desegregated. A district appeals court order established a biracial committee to advise the school board on a plan for desegregation. When the school board refused to forward the committee's recommended plan to the courts, the committee submitted it directly to the court, which ordered it to be implemented. Students were assigned to schools so that each school had a 70% white - 30% black ratio. Three elementary schools and Lincoln High School were closed.[14]

In 2021 the district chose to implement a mask mandate despite Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis prohibiting local school districts from doing so. The conflict brought national attention [15] and led the Florida Board of Education to take action against the Alachua County School Board, including financial penalties.[16] The district subsequently became the first in the nation to receive a U.S. Education Department grant[17] to cover the cost of garnished wages for school board members who voted for mask requirements and other COVID-19 mitigation measures.[18]

Elementary schools in the county run from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade, unless otherwise noted.

Middle schools in the county run from 6th to 8th grades, unless otherwise noted.

High schools in the county run from 9th to 12th grades.

The Alachua County Public Schools District Office is in a building which dates back, in part, to the Gainesville Graded and High School, which opened in 1900. When the Gainesville High School moved to a new building in 1923, the facility became the Eastside Elementary School, and later, Kirby Smith Elementary School, named after Edmund Kirby Smith, a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.[10] On August 27, 2017, following the August 11 and August 12, 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the School Board of Alachua County renamed the Kirby Smith Center [19] At the time of the name change, School Board Chair Robert Hyatt stated that the board considered the name change prior to the Unite the Right rally.[20]

Prior to June, 2020, the school was named JJ Finley Elementary School for Jesse J. Finley, who was a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials is motivated by the belief that the monuments glorify white supremacy and memorialize a treasonous government with founding principles based on the perpetuation and expansion of slavery.[21][22][23][24][25] An opposing belief also exists, that monuments and memorials to Confederates are part of the cultural heritage of the southern United States of America. In August 2017, the School Board of Alachua County acknowledged the Finley legacy as potentially problematic, but declined to take action to rename the school.[20] On June 16, 2020, the School Board of Alachua County (Florida) removed J.J. Finley's name from the school, during international protest associated with the murder of George Floyd.[26] The school board on August 18, 2020, named the school Carolyn Beatrice Parker Elementary. Caroline Parker was a native of Gainesville who graduated from, and later taught at, Lincoln High School in Gainesville. She worked as a research physicist in the Dayton Project during World War II.[27]

Stephen Foster is an American songwriter known primarily for parlor and minstrel music. Some modern interpretations of Foster's compositions consider the compositions to be disparaging to African Americans. Others, however, have argued that Foster unveiled the realities of slavery, while also imparting dignity to African Americans in his compositions, especially as he grew as an artist.[28]

Sidney Lanier served in the Confederate States Army as a private, and was promoted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy as a poet of the Confederate States of America. As stated in a previous sub-section of this article, removal of Confederate monuments and memorials is motivated by the belief that the monuments glorify white supremacy and memorialize a treasonous government with founding principles based on the perpetuation and expansion of slavery.[21][22][23][24][25] An opposing belief also exists, that monuments and memorials to Confederates are part of the cultural heritage of the southern United States of America.[28]