From a vision to fliers to students: Former legislator finds new way to help kids – by starting a school

LEESBURG, Florida – The first tangible evidence of a new private school opening in town were the 1,500 fliers printed at Staples and handed to parents as they left a Publix supermarket.

That’s how Darryl Reaves and his wife, Anette During, hoped to attract students to the K-8 school in Leesburg they planned to open for the 2022-23 school year. They canvassed strip mall parking lots.

“We lived outside the stores the whole summer,” Reaves said.

The couple watched a mother exit a store, a child or two in tow, and ask if she was interested in sending her kids to a school with small class sizes that was committed to helping children who didn’t have the means to a quality education receive one and reap its benefits.

Enough of them said yes to put Reaves’ plan in motion.

“We had 12 students and no building,” he said.

That problem was solved when Mt. Calvary Baptist Church offered rooms that could be used for classrooms, and in August 2022, First Trinity Academy opened its doors. There were 22 students, most in the lower grades.

Enrollment doubled in 2023-24 and is up to 76 this year, marking a remarkable growth that has Reaves already searching for a larger building.

Each student receives either the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship or the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options. Both are managed by Step Up For Students.

“The students who come here are from families that could never afford a private school without those scholarships,” said Reaves.

Tuition is $8,000 for grades K-3 and $7,500 for grades 4-8. There is also a $150 registration fee per family.

Students are required to take the Stanford 10, a Nationally Standardized Achievement Test. New students take the Let's Go Learn Diagnostic Test to evaluate their skill set so teachers have a baseline to measure the student’s progress.

Beacons of hope

There are eight teachers on staff at First Trinity Academy. During is the chief administrative officer. Reaves is headmaster, though he joked to a recent visitor that he’s also the janitor and dishwasher.

He wasn’t kidding. Before each lunch period, Reaves swept the dining room floor, cleaned the tables, and placed the students’ lunchboxes on the tables. He heated whatever lunches they brought that needed heating and cleaned whatever bowls needed cleaning.

“You have to be everything here,” he said. “We’re a small school, so we can’t offer the thrills.”

Reaves was raised in Miami by parents who were teachers. His dad served in the Florida Legislature. Reaves, who has a journalism degree from Florida A&M and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Florida, served in the Florida House of Representatives.

A Democrat, Reaves served in the Florida House alongside Tom Feeney. Feeney was Speaker of the House from 2000 to 2001 and shepherded the creation of Florida’s first tax credit scholarship bill. Though Reaves had left the legislature before the law’s passage, students at First Trinity Academy now benefit from it.

He said he thought of running a private school as far back as when he was in middle school. And, after spending several years as a teacher in the public school system, he decided to do just that.

“I learned from my parents that all children want to learn,” he said. “It's just a matter of giving them the opportunity. I have this philosophy that once you make children believe they can do the work, they will do the work.”

Reaves sees education as the means for families to break the cycle of poverty. He called it “the Civil Rights movement of our times.”

“It’s repetitive,” he said. “The parent doesn't graduate. The child is a parent. The daddy goes to jail. The son goes to jail. The grandsons go to jail. Drugs. Jail. Drugs. The community goes down, down, down.

“And somewhere along the line, there have to be beacons of hope that say, ‘Oh, you can be smart.’ We’re treading upstream, but that's our purpose.”

‘Be better than us’

Le’Shaun Gray considers himself one of those beacons.

A product of Florida State University, where he majored in interdisciplinary studies, Gray teaches science, social studies, and reading at First Trinity Academy.

“I wake up in the morning with a fire within me, because what an opportunity not only we have as educators, but our students have,” he said.

Gray was raised in Brooksville and attended district schools. He knows how easily a student can become overwhelmed at a big school. Some won’t ask questions because they are intimidated, and what was unclear to them remains unclear. First Trinity Academy’s classes are capped at 12 students; most are smaller. Gray can interact with every student every day.

“I can literally stop at each one of their desks and say, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ We can slow down. We can speed up however we need to,” Gray said.

His goal is to teach his students how to think and understand a topic, not just memorize material to pass a test. That’s how teachers can make a difference in a student’s life, Gray said.

“I feel it's our responsibility to pass on a knowledge of legacy to the generation behind us,” he said. “The goal is for them to be better than us.”

Going in the right direction

Alejandra Ortiz had been scouting private schools in Orlando for her daughter London during the summer of 2022. That would make for a long roundtrip commute from Leesburg every day, but Ortiz was committed to finding a better education setting for her only daughter.

Then one evening, while shopping for dinner at Publix, she was approached by Reaves in the parking lot. Ortiz was interested in what Reaves had to offer, and London became one of the original 22 students.

“We were thinking the same way,” Ortiz said.

London arrived as a first-grader, two grades behind her class. In nine weeks, she was promoted to the second grade, and by the start of the 2023-24 school year, she had advanced to her grade level.

“I saw a 180-degree turnaround halfway through that first year,” Ortiz said. “Things that she was struggling with before, she was no longer struggling with. The discipline, the communication, and the academics are definitely there in the school. She's definitely going in the right direction.”

London said she loves going to First Trinity Academy. She likes her classmates and the teachers. She likes how math teacher Jodi Porter compared fractions to slices of a cake.

Even with all the fliers and the canvassing of parking lots, word-of-mouth is still the best recruiter for Reaves. Parents talk to parents, and the students talk to their friends. When asked what she would say to a friend whose mother was thinking of sending her to First Trinity Academy, London said, “I would say you should definitely come because it's a good school and the teachers will understand you and you will have a lot of fun understanding and learning about new things.”

The vision

Three years in and Reaves is already scouting for a bigger location for his school. There is an empty former CVS nearby. In another part of town sits a building that used to house a furniture store. Both offer enough space for First Trinity Academy to continue its growth.

“We've proven that we can expand at a rapid pace, and I'm looking forward to expanding, perhaps even to 400 [or] 500 students,” During said.

That’s ambitious, yet Ortiz thinks it’s realistic.

“I feel like they're progressing nicely, honestly, especially in such a short amount of time,” she said. “My experience has been really good as a parent because I have that safety net where I know I could drop my daughter off and I'm going to pick her back up. I've been very happy with the results because they take that time out to get to know the child.”

Ortiz’s feelings sync with the vision Reaves and During had when they began distributing fliers outside Leesburg-area supermarkets.

• Every child can excel academically.
• Develop the whole child through education.

“That’s our vision.” During said. “Helping students that wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to or would not be given the opportunity to succeed academically.”

Roger Mooney, manager, communications, can be reached at [email protected].