- July 30, 2026
I learned a lot from Paul Harvey, in particular, to always tell “the rest of the story.” That’s what we’ll do today.
Volusia County School’s district administration responded to [my] recent column regarding their use of Richard Milburn Academy and the resulting effect on school grades. Their response rests on a single idea: that district grades are “calculated as if every student countywide ... is part of one combined school,” so RMA’s results still count, and moving students there changes nothing.
That sentence appears, nearly verbatim, on page 30 of the state’s 2025-26 Guide to Calculating School Grades, District Grades and the Federal Percent of Points Index. The district quotes only the half that helps it. Here’s the rest of the story:
The same state guide explains that when an alternative school chooses, as RMA did, to receive a School Improvement Rating instead of a school grade, its students’ performance is normally “tied back,” or counted, to their home-zoned school — their assigned school.
Here is what the district omitted: three separate times (pages 7, 13, 20), the guide carves out this exception: except when the alternative school is a charter school.
Richard Milburn Academy is a charter school. So the reading scores, math scores, learning gains and graduation-cohort membership of every student sent to RMA are removed from the grade of the high school that sent them.
The op-ed’s core claim was never about the district overall grade; it was about district efforts to protect individual high schools’ grades and ensure that the state minimum of 95% of students are tested at each school.
The 95% testing threshold is not districtwide either; it is applied school by school. A charter school co-located on a single campus can pull a meaningful share of that one school’s tested seniors off the books. The effect is therefore more concentrated.
The district argues that the state sets the grading formula. True, but irrelevant. No one said otherwise. Volusia merely found a work-around.
The district insists RMA’s outcomes still count toward district accountability. True, but incomplete. It’s true that at the district level, a non-excluded alternative-school student does count.
However, the district omits another exclusion (pages 7, 30) in the guide: students in alternative schools coded “R” for “dropout retrieval” or “E” for “alternative to expulsion” are “not included in school or district grades.”
That is the very population such programs serve. If Volusia assigns RMA students those codes, then the district’s assertion that RMA’s results “continue to count toward VCS’s overall district performance” is simply false.
The district argues that RMA’s 907 students equal only about 1.5% of 60,000 – too small to matter. But graduation rates are not measured against the entire student body. They are measured only across the size of the senior class of roughly 5,000 — and RMA now holds close to one in 11 of the county’s seniors, up from under one in a hundred a decade ago.
Also, it observes that graduation rate and test proficiency measure different things, with multiple diploma pathways available. Fair, and again irrelevant to the core of the column: that RMA graduates 77% of its students, but reports 2% proficiency. SAT or ACT scores do not produce that graduation number; that number is earned by students who can pass the final tests.
RMA’s accountability label is not a letter grade at all, but a School Improvement Rating of “Maintaining,” built from just two numbers: an English score and a math score. The state file that records it contains no graduation-rate column whatsoever.
Whether students are ordered or persuaded to transfer, enrollment counts do not reflect consent, and some of the district’s graduation gains are surely real. But the burden has shifted. The district says RMA changes nothing. The state’s guide says a charter alternative school’s data is subtracted from its sending schools, and that dropout-retrieval and alternative-to-expulsion students are excluded from the district grade as well. That was the core explanation of the recent op-ed.
Volusia County Schools can clarify all of this by releasing the dropout-prevention program codes assigned to RMA’s students, and the “home-zoned school” field the state already collects for each of them. Those two files would show, without argument, how many students were moved, when they were moved, where they came from and whether their results were counted or quietly omitted.
Until the district produces them, its response should be read for what it is: a fluent recitation of the parts of the rulebook that reassure, and a calculated silence about the parts that do not.
The district answered questions the column did not ask and left the real ones untouched.
That is the rest of the story.
Editor's Note: Volusia County Schools was given an opportunity to respond. Here is what VCS submitted:
Ms. Brosemer's column promises “the rest of the story.” It omits a considerable portion of it.
Her central new claim is that Richard Milburn Academy students may be coded “R” for dropout retrieval or “E” for alternative to expulsion, codes that would remove them from school and district grades. She writes that if Volusia assigns RMA students those codes, the district’s statement that RMA results continue to count is “simply false.”
We verified that claim against the state accountability records. For the 2025-26 accountability year, zero students districtwide carry the “R” code. Three students carry the “E” code, and all three attend Highbanks Learning Center. None attend Richard Milburn Academy.
The exclusion described in the column did not occur. Our statement was accurate. The factual premise underlying the column’s central allegation is incorrect.
Public officials have an obligation to ask difficult questions, and the district welcomes those questions. But public allegations should be grounded in verified facts, particularly when the information needed to verify them is readily available. When speculation is presented as fact, it creates unnecessary confusion for students, families, employees and the community. Accuracy should precede accusation.
That matters beyond this single issue because the column’s conclusion depends entirely on a factual assumption that was never verified before publication. The records were available, and they do not support the allegation.
The column’s headline comparison fails for a different reason. It contrasts a 77% graduation rate against 2% proficiency and treats the gap as self-evidently damning. Those figures answer two entirely different questions. Graduation rate measures whether students completed state graduation requirements through the diploma pathways established by the Legislature. Test proficiency measures performance on specific statewide assessments among the tested population. Comparing one directly to the other may produce a compelling headline, but it does not establish that one caused the other.
The column also relies on internally inconsistent reasoning. It states that the state file recording Richard Milburn Academy’s School Improvement Rating “contains no graduation-rate column whatsoever,” while simultaneously relying on the school’s graduation rate as a central part of its argument. Those two propositions cannot support the conclusion being advanced.
On the broader framework itself, we agree with one point and have never suggested otherwise: the state of Florida establishes the accountability system governing alternative schools and determines how student performance is reported. That is not an irrelevant distinction. Districts do not write those rules and cannot alter them.
Finally, the column’s most serious insinuation is also its least supported. It suggests that students may be ordered or persuaded to transfer, yet offers no referral records, directives, family accounts or other evidence to support that claim. Serious allegations affecting students, families and public employees deserve evidence, not inference. Suggesting misconduct without supporting facts invites readers to reach conclusions that the available record does not support.
Volusia County Schools serves students who are credit-deficient, over-age, working, parenting, or facing other significant challenges. Programs like Richard Milburn Academy exist because the alternative for many of those students is leaving school altogether.
We will continue to answer questions about these programs in School Board meetings, where questions can be asked publicly, records can be reviewed openly, and facts, not speculation, can guide the discussion. Public confidence is built through transparency, verified information and a commitment to accuracy.
