DELAND − As Principal Jessica Aivazis greeted her Starke Elementary School pupils, mostly by name and with hugs and high-fives, on the first day of school, she was intercepted at the front gate for a few minutes.
Volusia County Schools Superintendent Carmen Balgobin and a cadre of top district administrators presented Aivazis and the school with a banner signifying Starke’s precipitous leap in the state’s accountability system from a D-grade to an A in just one year. Balgobin noted it was only one of two schools in all of Florida to make such learning gains.
“It really represents excellence. Excellence in teaching and excellence in learning,” Balgobin said. “Carry it with a lot of pride, because you guys worked hard for this.”
School is underway at dozens of schools across Volusia and Flagler counties, with the rallying cry of building on learning gains while ensuring safety and security. In the hallways and inside classrooms, teachers and staff attempted to foster enthusiasm while also starting to establish rules and boundaries.
“It’s the first day of school,” said Jessica Fries, principal at Old Kings Elementary in Flagler Beach. “It’s the best day of the year.”
Volusia schools: ‘Persistence, collaboration and excellence’
At a press conference minutes later at DeLand High School, Balgobin extolled the Volusia district’s overall A − its first in 16 years − and the community of students, teachers, parents, school administrators and staff, as well as others, who made it happen.
“We are gathered here not just to celebrate numbers and rankings, no sir, it’s to honor … truly honor the spirit of let’s call it perseverance, collaboration and excellence, because those are the definitives that define Volusia County Schools,” Balgobin said. “As author Maya Angelou said, ‘Nothing works unless you do.'”
The district intends to build on its academic achievements, aiming to increase test scores and the number of “A” schools, Balgobin said.
Also, the district is working toward ensuring that 100% of its career-technical programs and academies are certified, she said. Additionally, she mentioned an effort to make Starke Elementary the first magnet school with a STEM + arts program, while also looking into bringing artificial intelligence instruction to a few other schools, including Chisholm Elementary in Daytona Beach.
During the press conference, Balgobin’s chief of staff John Cash acknowledged the reality that the district is in a competition for student enrollment.
“Florida is the leader in the nation when it comes to parental rights. We recognize that,” Cash said. “But what we will tell you is this: You will never hear anybody on the superintendent’s team say anything disparagingly about charter schools or private schools or choice schools. But what we will say is we think we’re the best game in town.”
While at Starke, Balgobin stopped a dropping-off parent to make sure he understood what the A-grade represented.
“That’s nice. Good,” he said. “That’s awesome.”
Balgobin responded: “Tell 10 friends today.”
Decline in enrollment expected
Balgobin said Volusia started the day with 56,508 students across its schools, with another 4,000 students attending charter schools within the district.
The state begins counting after 10 days, as some students traditionally trickle in over the first week or two. While the district is expecting to see a drop in enrollment, part of a wider trend, due to a decline in birthrates in the mid-2000s, Balgobin expressed optimism that the district’s A grade will help keep it an attractive option in a competitive environment.
“I know we were projected to have 1,400 students less, and I think we are going to see some of that,” she said in an interview following the press conference, “but I think because of the fact that our district has been able to get to this status, it’s definitely going to support that process.”
Old Kings principal: Motivation starts with staff
At Old Kings, Flagler County Schools Superintendent LaShakia Moore and board members Christy Chong and Lauren Ramirez visited as part of a multi-school tour.
In one classroom, a teacher asked students about their summer.
One went to a Universal Studios resort. Another got four chickens, but one of them died.
The teacher then said she was planning to post a “social contract,” a big paper on the wall that every student would sign, pledging to be courteous to one another.
Another teacher had students read from an “all about me” worksheet, sharing their favorite color, food and book, before playing a game of hot potato.
“I think the biggest thing is starting with building enthusiasm with our staff,” said Fries, the principal. “I think that when our staff is excited to be here, that trickles down to our students.”
A goal for Old Kings is to regain its 2023-24 recognition as one of Florida’s Schools of Excellence.
“I think our students seem genuinely happy to be back,” Fries said. “Our teachers are happy to be back. We had such a great showing this morning. Families were allowed to walk their child to class. There was definitely some great energy throughout the hallways this morning.”
New metal detectors coming to Volusia’s 10 high schools
Back in Volusia County, officials ran through a list of new initiatives and goals for the 2025-26 school year, and board member Ruben Colón mentioned new metal detectors being employed at Pine Ridge High School in Deltona.
He said the detectors are “something my community has been asking for forever, and so I’m so glad that the technology is there to support that now in a way that students don’t have to show up three hours before school.”
Pine Ridge is just the first, as all 10 Volusia high schools will be getting the metal detectors over the next couple of months.
Capt. Todd Smith, director of safety and security for Volusia County Schools, said new metal detectors will continue with Atlantic High School in Port Orange later in the week.
About every two weeks, the district will add metal detectors at two additional high schools until complete, Smith said, and he’s hopeful the program can be expanded to middle schools next year, calling it “contingent on funding.”
The AI-powered Evolv detectors are able to move students through the machines without long delays, he said.
“The one thing that you want to do is make sure you get all of the kids into the school without there being a delay in their education,” Smith said. “What we’ve found is these metal detectors are able to get those kids in in a reasonable period of time so that they get the education they deserve.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Starke Elementary in DeLand enters new school year after rocketing from a ‘D’ to an ‘A’
Reporting by Mark Harper, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
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