Original Research by School Decision on Pace Center for Girls
PACE Center for Girls in Tampa is an alternative school serving young women in grades six through twelve, operating under the Hillsborough County school district. The enrollment is quite small, with students concentrated in the upper high school grades, and the school's character as an alternative setting shapes nearly every dimension of what the data can and cannot say about it.
State assessment results were not available for this school, which is a common pattern for alternative schools. Alternative programs frequently serve students who have faced disruptions in traditional settings, and standardized testing participation and reporting often look different for these populations. A parent or reader should not interpret the absence of proficiency data as a weak academic record; the nature of the program makes these comparisons inapt, and a direct conversation with the school about its academic outcomes and graduation pathways would give a much clearer picture than any statewide metric.
The student body, based on reported enrollment data, is predominantly Black and Hispanic, with a small share of white and multiracial students. Free-and-reduced-price lunch eligibility rates were not reported in the data we have, so economic context for the student population is not fully visible here. No data was available on English learner rates or special education rates either.
Graduation rate data was not available in the comparison set, and the comparison framework itself noted that the standard metrics used to position districts in Hillsborough County do not apply to this school, precisely because the data is missing at the school level. What is publicly reported about PACE Center for Girls broadly, consistent with the network it belongs to, is that the organization focuses on girls who have experienced trauma, involvement with the justice system, academic setbacks, or family instability, and that its model combines academics with counseling and life-skills support. This context explains why comparisons to conventional schools on metrics like proficiency index or chronic absenteeism are not meaningful measures of what the school is doing.
The school's address places it on East Hillsborough Avenue in a working-class corridor of Tampa, north of the downtown business district and east of Seminole Heights. The surrounding part of the city is not the walkable, amenity-rich zone near the Riverwalk or Hyde Park; it is a more utilitarian strip of Tampa with transit access via HART but without the concentrated street life of the city's most walkable neighborhoods.
For families considering the local housing market, home values in the zip code are meaningfully below the Florida statewide benchmark, though they have softened slightly over the past year along with the broader Tampa market. Rents have also pulled back modestly. The broader Hillsborough district context is relevant here: voters approved a multi-year property tax referendum in late 2024, publicly reported as a measure to raise teacher and staff pay, funded through a millage increase that runs through mid-2029. Homeowners in the county are carrying that additional cost. The district also undertook a large-scale rezoning that shifted boundaries for many conventional schools in 2024, though for an alternative placement school like PACE, standard attendance zones do not apply in the same way.
For a family whose daughter is connected to or being considered for PACE, the right questions are not about AP course counts or standardized test scores. They are about what individualized academic planning looks like, how the counseling model works, what the path to graduation or credential completion is, and what support exists around specific challenges a student is facing. The school's small size means caseloads and attention can be concentrated, but a parent would want to ask directly about staffing, programming continuity, and post-program transition support. Program details were not available in the data we have, and a school visit or conversation with staff would fill those gaps more reliably than any external profile can.
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