By Kyle Coppola
Lake County Schools Earn A Rating For First Time Since 2008
For the first time since 2008, Lake County Schools has earned an “A” grade from the Florida Department of Education.
The grade, announced by the department today, is based on test scores from the 2024-25 school year.
“I am so proud of our teachers, administrators, support staff, and students for putting the ‘A’ in Lake again,” Lake County Schools Superintendent Diane Kornegay said. “We are going to build on this momentum and enter the new school year stronger than ever: focused, inspired, and committed to continued excellence.”
Lake students showed improvement in all tested areas: English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies. Among the most notable achievements was a 15 percentage point increase in Algebra 1 proficiency. Also noteworthy was a 7 percentage point increase in English Language Arts in grades 9 and 10 and an overall increase in English Language Arts of 4 percentage points. These results reflect the district’s focused efforts on learning, standard by standard and student by student.
Students showed a 4 percentage point increase on the civics end-of-course exam.
The district attributes the success to several key initiatives:
- Teacher collaboration through Professional Learning Teams
- An intensive focus on grade and/or course standards that define what a student must know and be able to do to achieve mastery
- Data-driven instruction to identify and address learning gaps.
“This ‘A’ belongs to all of us, especially to our students who put in the hard work and kept their focus on academic achievement,” Superintendent Kornegay said. “Congratulations, Lake County. We earned our A, a reflection of how we are elevating learning in Lake.”
Kyle Coppola was born in Newton, Massachusetts and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communications from Curry College in 2016. After traveling to Florida on a family vacation, he decided he could not get enough of the warm weather and made the move from snowy Massachusetts to central Florida 8 years ago.
For the last decade Kyle has gained valuable experience in social media content creation, marketing and sales, writing, video production, sports announcing and even broadcasting for local radio stations, such as FM 102.9 in The Villages and FM 91.5 in Massachusetts. Every year he volunteers at The Villages Charter High School as a play-by-play sports announcer for the football games as well as a public address announcer for the basketball games, including the annual Battle at The Villages Tournament.
Outside the office Kyle is a husband and father to two beautiful girls along with their cat. In his spare time he likes to spend time with his family, travel, play golf and swim. He is also a huge sports junkie and even bigger motorsports fan and loves to attend racing events when he can.
