Florida’s school grades have been released, and the Volusia County School District earned an A for the first time since 2008-2009.
District officials said they were able to show “substantial improvements” in 10 of the 12 areas of accountability, while none of the schools fell below proficiency, or a C.
“This A is more than a measure of academic success. It is a reflection of a district and a community that chose to come together − with purpose and with heart − to ignite a passion for learning in all students,” Carmen Balgobin, Volusia County Schools’ superintendent, said in a prepared statement.
The highest-overall-ranked high school was Seabreeze in Daytona Beach. Still, Volusia performed well overall, with six out of the nine traditional high schools performing above the state average.
Mainland, also in Daytona Beach, earned its first-ever A, while Taylor Middle-High School in Pierson achieved its first-ever B.
The report also included a ‘College and Career Readiness’ category, which was calculated based on the percentage of graduates who earned a passing score in an AP, IB or AICE exam or a passing grade in a dual-enrollment course.
Deltona High School ranked the highest while also maintaining a 100% graduation rate. For the 2025 grades, FDOE uses graduation rates from the Class of 2024.
The longest-serving Volusia School Board members, Jamie Haynes and Ruben Colón, were in celebratory moods when reached on July 7.
Haynes, the board chair, said this is just the fourth time in district history the system has achieved an A grade from the state.
“It’s phenomenal,” Haynes said. “I’m so proud of all the students, teachers, staff and administrators who put in the time. … You have to look at what the students did. They were the ones who sat for the tests.”
Colón, who, like Haynes, was first elected to the School Board in 2018, said Volusia’s A grade was the result of “intentional work one student at a time.”
“In the state of Florida, there were 28 districts that got an A, but there were six districts that improved from a B to an A,” he said. “We are proud to be one of those districts.”
One Flagler school drops, but district maintains a B
The Flagler County School District earned a B, with Matanzas High School performing above Florida’s average.
It was the fourth consecutive year Flagler earned that letter grade. The district had no school grades in 2020 or 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The last time Flagler had an A-rating was 2019.
Of Flagler schools, all were As or Bs, with the exception of Buddy Taylor Middle, which dropped from a B in 2024 to a C in 2025. Matanzas High earned an A, while Flagler-Palm Coast High ended with a B.
Flagler earned more points than Volusia in six of seven English language arts and mathematics categories, but fell behind in science achievement, middle school acceleration (a measure of the percentage of eligible students who passed an end-of-course high-school level assessment or industry certification), high school graduation rate and college and career acceleration rates (such as AP, IB or AICE exams or passing grades in dual enrollment courses).
In all, Flagler fell two points shy of a 64, the score needed for an A.
DeSantis: ‘A really big deal’
Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference in Jacksonville on July 7 to discuss the grades and Florida’s progress on education.
“I’m happy to announce that Florida schools earned improved grades across all school types, including 71% of all graded schools are now earning either an A or a B grade,” DeSantis said. “That’s a really big deal. This exceeds our performance last year, in which 64% of schools earned an A or B grade.”
The Florida Department of Education highlighted several other metrics, including:
6 of 9 Volusia County high schools earn As
High school performance in Volusia County seems to be rebounding from lows in 2016, as well as the pandemic.
All of Volusia’s high schools earned either As or Bs; no Volusia schools scored lower than a C.
Of the traditional high schools, six earned As: Deltona, DeLand, Mainland, Spruce Creek, Seabreeze and University.
Also, Volusia Online Learning maintained its A.
Just one of the middle schools earned an A: Creekside Middle School in Port Orange. Eight were Bs and three had Cs.
And of the elementaries, 21 earned As, including Starke in DeLand, which leapt from a D in 2024. Eleven elementary schools earned Bs, while 13 came in with Cs.
Julio Nazario-Valle, Volusia County Schools’ chief academic officer, said a system of teachers collaborating with the curriculum instruction department worked as it was designed.
“I’m very laser-focused on the interaction between our district experts and with student support from January until the end of the year,” Nazario-Valle said. “The first semester, I focus on professional learning and building on their pedagogy and content knowledge. I’ve always believed in helping people build their toolkit.”
Nazario-Valle said students in Volusia’s elementary, middle, and high schools are given assessments every quarter.
“Every single year, we have been able to go back and see how our students have performed in relation to the state assessment,” he said. “We’ve gone back with teachers to really look through those items and make sure we’re assessing what we’re supposed to assess.”
Charter schools offer mixed results
Among charter schools in the Volusia-Flagler area, Samsula Academy and Imagine School at Town Center in Palm Coast dropped from grade B to grade C.
Meanwhile, Ivy Hawn Charter School of the Arts in Lake Helen rose from B to A. Burns Science and Technology Charter School maintained its A, while The Reading Edge Academy remained a C.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Florida Department of Education releases school grades: How did Volusia, Flagler do?
Reporting by Mark Harper and Gabriel Velasquez Neira, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
