SW Paces Gln, Lake City, FL 32024

Negative reviews are disproportionate. (I just graduated). Many of the AP teachers at this school are amazing (Mr. Kirby, Mr. Reynolds, Mrs. Ledford, Mrs. Thompson, Mr. Braley). Admins are meh. School lunch has a bomb nacho line. Safety concerns are met with SROs and metal detectors. If you initiate a fight, you go to jail. Overall experience over the years has been fine.

Don’t let the “high scores” fool you!I will start off by saying I had very high hopes for this school. We were so excited to find a home in this boundary…I love my house still, but I do NOT like this school. They do not encourage the students to challenge themselves and they do NOT allow them to test at a reading level that is higher then where they are at, even if the student is confident that they will succeed. This new principal does NOT care about the students progress. She does not take the time to come up solutions when you come to her with a problem, instead she just tries to find the quickest and easiest solution for herself. For example: I work with my son after school instead of paying $10 for aftercare. When I brought up that the children in aftercare get to test on their reading, but my sons not allowed to do it at home, her solution, without any time to think about what was best for the students, just take it away for everyone…how is that going to help the students? Also friends in other districts are able to test at home, and when I called the department of education and asked them what the policy was, they said she should be able to allow him to test and they weren’t sure why she wouldn’t allow him to do so. When asked what our options were because we did not agree with what she was saying and how she ran the programs at the school(I should say her neglect to run the programs because she had no idea what was going on) her solution was we can go to a different school. Does she not realize the school gets funding based on how many students are at the school? Why would you not want to try to keep as many students as possible? And I’m not asking for anything crazy, I’m not asking to break any rules, I was just asking for her to give my son a fair opportunity to excel in his reading. He picked a book that was .2 over his reading level, read it, wanted to test on it and they wouldn’t let him. If he would have passed that test, he would have met his reading goal for the semester(same day) and his average reading level would have gone up but they wouldn’t let him…so he grabbed a book that was .2 UNDER his average reading level, read it as quick as he could because he wanted to meet that goal and got a 60% on the quiz because he rushed through it. That caused his average reading level to go DOWN and he still didn’t meet his goal…you are failing the students when you do that. How do I see that, but the principal does not see any problem with it.