From the Superintendent's Desk

The FCAT has come and gone and our students and teachers have taken a well deserved break during Fair Week. According to our principals, testing went smoothly and our students concentrated and worked hard. Parents, we appreciate your help in supporting your children during this annual test. Support, high expectations, and encouragement from home are vital to all of our students for them to be academically successful. We will have FCAT results in a few weeks. In the meantime our teachers and students are back hitting the books and computers.

Our teachers and support staff are a terrific group and many put in extra hours and go out of their way to support our students. This group also spends many hours in learning enhanced teaching skills and how to use new technology in facilitating “Quadrant D” lessons and “21st Century” skills. Please take a moment and thank this group for the great job they do with your children. They care and they show it every day.

All across Florida cities and counties are experiencing plummeting sales of real estate and homes. This in turn has decreased the flow of tax dollars into state coffers from a flood to a trickle and forced school districts, including Gilchrist, to cut large chunks of dollars out of their budgets. This financial downturn has forced cities and counties to look for ways to diversify local economies and create a more stable job base.

Jacksonville, already one of the nation’s premier seaports, is enlarging its harbor in hopes of snaring even more of the world’s shipping. Miami is working hard to strengthen ties with Central and South America to become an even more important trade partner. Alachua County and Gainesville are optimistic that Shands Hospital and the University of Florida will spur spin-off businesses that will make use of the growing number of life-science and technology labs available. Elsewhere in Florida, there are attempts to attract high-tech computer-related companies, bioscience labs, nanotechnology firms, life science industries, manufacturing firms, automotive firms, medical product firms, and information technology businesses. All of these require special skills and are high-wage industries.

Back in the 1980’s, the local Chamber of Commerce formulated a vision for Gilchrist County that foresaw this area developing as a tourist spot, a medical mecca, and a bedroom community for Gainesville. It has become a bedroom community for Gainesville as about 40% of our people travel to Gainesville daily to work. It would appear that the medical community will be centered on the new hospital in Chiefland and that the tourist attraction of the Suwannee and Santa Fe Rivers has not yet been fully developed. What has happened is that as our farm industry decreased, our land has been cut up into subdivisions and home sites waiting for buyers. This school year, districts across Florida lost students as families slowed in relocating to Florida due to the high cost of home insurance, the uncertainty of our property tax situation, and hurricanes. Gilchrist lost about 22 students. However, the population of our county continued to increase and it would appear that more retired persons are locating here.

Gilchrist County’s population is currently over 17,000, and has had an annual growth rate of 2.7% over the last five years. According to the State of Florida, our growth will continue to be better than 20,000 people by the year 2015. The average annual wage earned in Gilchrist is $27,231, while the average annual wage for all of Florida is $38,454. Manufacturing jobs provide an annual average salary of $43,732 for about 400,000 Floridians. About 14% of our population is considered to be living below the poverty level and about 72% of our residents are high school graduates. However, only about 9% of our population has a bachelor’s degree or higher. Service jobs are held by about 32% of our population, while about 22% are employed in the government sector and 15% in the farming industry. However, the most powerful statistic is that the average per hour wage for Gilchrist County is $13.00 per hour.

Now why is any of this important to those of us who live here or to those who would like to live, work or locate a business in our county? How does this concern our graduates who would like to return home and be employed in a high wage job? Is Gilchrist’s future to be a bedroom community to Gainesville and a haven for retirees? Are the graduates who remain here going to be tied to working in Gainesville?

Maybe it’s time that we take a second look at a vision for Gilchrist County. Change and growth will come to Gilchrist. We can seek to direct and control this growth or it will roll right over us. Perhaps it’s time for the three City Commissions, the County Commission, the School Board, and all interested stakeholders to have a serious dialogue on what direction Gilchrist will take. Items up for discussion should include infrastructure such as sewer, water, and transportation routes. Our Comprehensive Land Plan should be reviewed and updated and sites for industrial development discussed. Ideas should be discussed for strengthening economic ties with Alachua and Columbia Counties and enticing employers to consider Gilchrist for company operations. There are companies who don’t need super-highways to operate, but do need land, buildings, a trained work force, and economic incentives. We must search for a balance between Gilchrist’s past and an opportunity-filled future.

Is Gilchrist ready for this discussion? I think it is. With all the economic development going on in the counties around us, it is time to chart our economic future. Will it be easy? No. Will it be messy and controversial? Probably. But that is what change and democracy are all about.

Now, how do we get a dialogue started?