By 1850, Alachua County had one public school, but only about 30 of the county's 642 white children attended it. At right, Union Academy stood at present-day corner of NW 1st Street and 6th Avenue on private land purchased by black residents. It served about 170 students in its first term. Today, the Alachua County school district has 43 schools, with an enrollment of 29,763. School segregation ended in 1970, some 16 years after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., after a 1969 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with a local minister's claims that local school officials were resisting integration.
Children ride yellow school buses to large brick and concrete buildings, where they meet year-round.
Computers are rapidly becoming a part of regular classroom instruction. Teachers belong to unions, which negotiate yearly contracts with an elected school board. Education has come a long way. But it has stayed the same. The opinion largely prevails that the public school system will largely fail to meet public expectations in its results unless more funds are provided.