In under six months, Newberry Elementary School will officially open as a charter school for the 2026-27 school year. The Newberry Community School Board met Monday to discuss enrollment rates and transportation plans for the new school.
Enrollment rates
Newberry Community School has enrolled 427 students since opening applications Feb. 1, Principal Lacy Roberts said. Of those students, the majority — about 83% — are currently attending Newberry Elementary School.
In the 2024-25 school year, the National Center for Education Statistics reported Newberry Elementary School had 651 students, meaning the charter school has recruited a little over half of the school’s estimated population.
Students currently enrolled in Newberry Elementary School will automatically be accepted into the charter school, according to the school’s website. However, parents must submit an application before their child is accepted.
Transportation
Apart from enrollment, the board also discussed transportation. In January, the board began searching for transportation companies. The current frontrunner is Tomahawk Transportation, a bus rental company based out of Tallahassee.
Daniel Bostick, the president of Tomahawk Transportation, attended Monday’s meeting. He stressed the company’s priorities of “reliability and safety.”
“Timeliness is kind of my mantra, what I live by,” Bostick said. “If we can’t stick to it, that means something with the routing is incorrect, and we need to fix the problem as quickly as possible.”
The transportation company plans to provide Newberry Community School with six buses — four for daily use and two for backup. The company plans to use the four current bus routes in Newberry devised by Alachua County Public Schools.
The longest, most rural route will take roughly an hour, he said. However, routes can be tweaked if necessary.
Bostick also shared the company’s hiring plans. It hopes to hire four full-time bus drivers and an operations manager out of Newberry, he said. The operations manager will act as a backup bus driver.
The company aims to eliminate the stress of transportation for board members and parents, Bostick said.
“The last thing that we want is for school bus transportation to be one of their [parents’] concerns,” he said. “That needs to run like clockwork from day one.”
The board will later negotiate with the company and finalize a two-year contract.
The next Newberry Community School Board meeting will take place March 23 at the Little Red Schoolhouse in Newberry.
Contact Grace Larson at glarson@alligator.org. Follow her on X @graceellarson.
Grace Larson is a first-year journalism student, currently serving as K-12 education reporter. She has previously served as city/county commission reporter for The Alligator's metro desk. In her free time, she enjoys staying active and hanging out with her family.
