After seven hours of counting ballots, the initiative that would turn Newberry Elementary School, Oak View Middle School, and Newberry High School into community-based, public charter schools failed to pass on Wednesday.
Brandy Oldman, a board member of Save Our Schools Newberry, said she was pleased with the voting results.
“I’m happy,” Oldman said. “We didn’t need any of the stress, so I’m happy for it maybe to be over.”
The public vote count took place at the Mentholee Norfleet Municipal Building in Newberry. Members of Education First for Newberry and Save Our Schools Newberry, groups representing both sides of the issue, as well as other city residents were present to witness the ballot count conducted by an independent arbitrator.
The voting process, which spanned from April 5-12, was open to all three schools. Registered voters had the option to either mail their ballots or cast their votes in person, ensuring a fair and accessible process.
For a vote to be accepted, three things had to happen: the ballot had to be turned in by an eligible parent or teacher of one of the three schools, the envelopes could have no personal identification on them, and ballots needed to be in their appropriate envelopes and placed in the appropriate box for either parents or teachers. Lastly, if a teacher did not participate in the vote, that would automatically be counted as a “No” vote.
The first ballots to be counted were those belonging to Newberry Elementary School. Starting with the teachers, 23 votes were needed out of the 44 eligible teacher votes.
In the midst of reading off the ballots, there was a mistake with one of the votes cast. A teacher submitted a parent ballot inside a teacher envelope to the teacher ballot box. The ballot was set aside while the voting continued.
Once all the ballots were counted, the final tally came out to be 22 votes in favor of the conversion and 21 votes against the conversion. The ballot set aside due to improper voting procedure was marked as a “Yes” vote.
However, due to statutes, that ballot could not be counted in the final vote tally.
The parent vote count for Newberry Elementary passed, with 149 votes in favor of the charter out of the 274 accepted votes. Regardless of the parent result, the school will not be converted to a charter school because the teacher vote failed to reach the necessary 23 teacher votes.
Joel Searby, a parent and board member of Education First for Newberry, said the decision on the elementary school vote will be appealed in the coming days.
“The supervisor of elections declared that the teacher vote failed, but we are preparing our options and looking at that,” Searby said. “We are not prepared to concede the teacher vote yet for the elementary school.”
The middle and high school votes were more straightforward than the elementary school votes.
Of the 47 accepted teacher votes for Oak View Middle School, 40 were against the charter school conversion. Of the 378 accepted parent ballots cast for the middle school, 244 were against the charter school conversion. Both votes fell well below the 50% plus one rule.
Newberry High School had a split vote between the teachers and parents.
Of the 23 accepted teacher ballots, 17 votes were in favor of the charter school conversion and 12 votes against, with six teachers abstaining from the vote. Thus, the teacher's vote cleared the threshold necessary to be in favor of the conversion.
The parent vote supported leaving the schools as they are. Of the 263 accepted ballots, 149 were against the conversion, and 114 were in favor.
Tyler Foerst, Co-Chair of Save Our Schools Newberry, said he was happy with the voting results but fears that the division this process has created will continue.
“Given the fact that they have already made clear their intention to sue over this issue, and the parents that brought it have said they will continue to bring this forth, I expect this will continue to happen,” Foerst said. “I don’t think that Jordan Marlowe [Mayor of Newberry] or Joel Searby will do anything to heal the divisions that they’ve created by pushing this.”
Alachua County School District spokesperson Jackie Johnson said that, following the vote, both sides of the issue can take something positive from the process.
“I think it’s very clear that the people in this community and in Archer feel very strongly about their schools,” Johnson said. “That’s always a good thing for the students and the staff to know that people are so passionate about what happens in their schools.”