The district also received the What Parents Want Award from SchoolMatch, the nation's largest school selection consulting firm.

The district offers a number of magnet programs for gifted/talented students at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

It also has thirteen career-tech high school magnet programs in fields such as healthcare, biotechnology, culinary arts and emergency services.

The next year the Union Academy, a school for African-Americans sponsored by the Freedmen's Bureau, opened in Gainesville.

[8][9] The Compromise of 1877, which marked the end of Reconstruction, left the Alachua County school system under the control of white Democrats.

[10][8] For a number of years public schools in Alachua County met in old houses or other rented spaces.

Over the next few years schools in the neighboring communities of Newnansville, Haynsworth, Greenleaf, Hague, Gracy, Perseverance, Spring Hill, Santa Fe, Bland and LaCrosse were closed and the students moved to the Alachua school.

In response to the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, the Alachua County Public Schools Board was ordered by the courts to operate a freedom of choice system starting in 1964, when there were eleven all-black schools in the district.

That year the U.S. Supreme Court decided, in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, that public schools must be immediately fully desegregated.

A district appeals court order established a biracial committee to advise the school board on a plan for desegregation.

[17] The district subsequently became the first in the nation to receive a U.S. Education Department grant[18] to cover the cost of garnished wages for school board members who voted for mask requirements and other COVID-19 mitigation measures.

[22][23][24][25][26] An opposing belief also exists, that monuments and memorials to Confederates are part of the cultural heritage of the southern United States of America.

Others, however, have argued that Foster unveiled the realities of slavery, while also imparting dignity to African Americans in his compositions, especially as he grew as an artist.

As stated in a previous sub-section of this article, removal of Confederate monuments and memorials is motivated by the belief that the monuments glorify white supremacy and memorialize a treasonous government with founding principles based on the perpetuation and expansion of slavery.

[22][23][24][25][26] An opposing belief also exists, that monuments and memorials to Confederates are part of the cultural heritage of the southern United States of America.