On Tuesday, nearly 20 Alachua County Public School teachers received calls telling them they’ve been reassigned to another school. By Thursday, the district had revoked eight of the changes.
The attempt to reassign educators less than a week before they return to work follows state law prohibiting schools graded D or F from having a high concentration of teachers who are inexperienced or in need of improvement.
The law also states school districts can use salary incentives to encourage “effective” teachers to move to underperforming schools.
On July 9, Gabriel Lopez, a former kindergarten teacher at Terwilliger Elementary School, received a letter incentivizing him to work at a school improvement, or SI, school. These schools include Lake Forest, Metcalfe, Rawlings and Williams Elementary Schools.
Lake Forest and Metcalfe dropped from C to D schools at the end of the 2025-26 school year. Rawlings dropped from a C to an F, and Williams maintained its D grade.
The letter told Lopez he could receive up to an additional $11,000 a year for the next three years if he moves to and continues to teach at one of these schools.
Letters were sent to teachers labeled as effective or highly effective based on student testing.
The letter came as a shock to Lopez, who received a letter of nonrenewal in April. He said he thought he might have an opportunity to return to the classroom.
Upon further inspection, the district told him he was mistakenly sent the document and was not eligible despite having earned a three out of four on his students’ test scores.
Lopez, who is fighting the legality of his nonrenewal and now running for a school board position, still doesn’t know why he’s been nonrenewed. He said his nonrenewal letter suggests his performance was subpar.
The letter states that receiving a “satisfactory evaluation” at another district may allow him to return to ACPS.
Lopez said he believes he was nonrenewed because he documented children’s misbehavior in his classroom.
Last year, he said, he had three students who would exhibit disruptive and sometimes violent behavior. He was told to call the behavior resource teacher and write referrals.
The volume of referrals he had to write could have led to his nonrenewal, Lopez said. The referrals may have made the school look bad or limited funding, he added.
“If teachers are essentially documenting these incidents that affect the classroom, they're being reprimanded in the most harsh, severe, awful way by essentially being nonrenewed and told, ‘Hey, you can't work here anymore,’” Lopez said. “So I really think that's all it was, that I was essentially trying to help my class succeed by having these children removed when they were becoming disruptive, and that's it.”
Lopez was among 76 teachers nonrenewed at the end of the 2025-26 school year. This is down from the 101 teachers nonrenewed at the end of the previous school year.
Lopez said the decision to nonrenew and reassign effective teachers comes amid a nationwide teacher shortage.
As of Friday, there are 150 teacher job listings on the ACPS Employment Applications page. This is just three days before teachers are to return to classrooms for preplanning and a little over a week before the start of the school year.
Many concerned parents and educators took to Facebook to share their opinions about the sudden teacher reassignments.
Jennifer Garces de Marcilla, a 43-year-old mother, took to Facebook after hearing about the issue. Her comment was among hundreds left on various posts referencing the reassignments.
She said the decision to relocate teachers is harmful not only to educators, but also students.
“I think a lot of people are not particularly happy with a lot of the things that the superintendent is doing,” Garces de Marcilla said. “So having those issues on top of everything else, it just feels like they're just gonna keep going in a bad direction.”
Garces de Marcilla was not alone in her sentiment. Several educators attended Thursday’s school board meeting to voice their concerns.
Julia Gatson, a soon-to-be teacher at Glen Springs Elementary School, was among those impacted by the reassignments. Gatson originally taught at Foster Elementary School, which closed at the end of the 2025-26 school year.
Foster Elementary School teachers were given the opportunity to list schools they would like to teach at, and Gatson was assigned to Glen Springs. Earlier this week, she said she was reassigned to Lake Forest. Within 36 hours, she said she was back at Glen Springs.
She called the principals of both schools, and only one knew she hadn’t been reassigned, she added.
“SI schools need and deserve excellent teachers,” Gatson said. “Nobody can dispute that, but the way that this was handled is only going to leave a bad taste in the mouths of teachers and families alike.”
For educators like Gatson, the reassignment is another obstacle to navigate amid an array of changes presented last school year, including rezoning, school closures and administrative reassignments.
Leigh Ann Roane was another educator who spoke against the teacher reassignments during public comment.
She originally attended the meeting to voice concerns on behalf of three teachers who had been reassigned from her school. However, as she was on her way to the meeting, she said she learned they were no longer reassigned.
Still, her message remained the same.
“Transferring teachers to different schools, even SI schools, isn't the issue here,” Roane said. “The issue is transferring teachers less than a week before preplanning starts, not considering each teacher as an individual, creating vacancies within a few days before school starts — at schools where these teachers were being pulled from — and not doing enough to make improvements at those SI schools, so that teachers want to work there.”
Though staffing decisions are made by the superintendent rather than board members, several of them addressed community concerns about reassignments.
Board Chair Thomas Vu said the staffing changes happen every year, and he’s glad they occurred ahead of preplanning. To keep it fair, decisions were made on a “last in, first out” basis, he added.
“We need to do a better job of educating our teachers about this and giving them a heads up,” Vu said, “especially during the summer or right before this might be happening so it’s not blindsiding people.”
Board member Sarah Rockwell said she would be willing to help recently reassigned teachers move into their new classrooms Aug. 3 and 7.
ACPS spokesperson Jackie Johnson did not respond to multiple requests for comment via email and phone call.
Teachers will begin preplanning Aug. 3, and school will start Aug. 10.
Contact Grace Larson at glarson@alligator.org. Follow her on X @graceellarson.
Grace Larson is a second-year journalism student and this summer's metro editor. She previously worked as city/county commission reporter and K-12 education reporter for The Alligator. When she's not editing stories, Grace enjoys running, weightlifting and going on random side quests. If she's not at her desk, you can find her at any place offering free food and crafts.
