Original Research by School Decision on Pace School for Girls
PACE School for Girls is a small, girls-only alternative school in Fort Myers, serving students across middle and high school grades. Its enrollment is quite small for a school spanning that many grade levels, which means every student who attends is part of an intimate community. The school is classified as an alternative placement, which typically signals that it serves students whose circumstances, academic histories, or personal situations call for something outside a conventional school setting. That context matters for a family reading this: the population here is not the general K-12 student body, and the school's structure reflects that purpose.
On the academic side, state assessment data was not available for PACE School for Girls. This is common for alternative schools, where enrollment may be too small for reportable results, or where student mobility and placement patterns fall outside standard testing windows. A parent who wants to understand how academic instruction is structured, what coursework is available, and what pathways to graduation look like would want to ask the school directly. Program information was also not available in the data we reviewed.
Graduation rate data was similarly absent. Given the alternative school designation, this is worth noting without over-reading: many alternative schools serve students who are working to re-engage with schooling, and standard four-year graduation rate reporting may not capture their outcomes in the same way it does for a conventional high school. The school's leadership would be the right source for understanding what completion looks like here.
The student body is racially and ethnically mixed, with Hispanic students making up a plurality, followed by white and Black students. A meaningful share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, though it is a minority of the total enrollment rather than a majority. Data on students with IEPs and English learners was not reported, so that part of the picture is incomplete.
On discipline, attendance, and staffing, no data was provided, and chronic absenteeism figures were not available for comparison purposes either.
PACE School for Girls sits within the Lee County school district, which has been through some notable shifts. The district moved away from its longstanding open-choice student assignment model toward a proximity-based system, phased in over recent years, which changed both where students are assigned and when they receive district transportation. Governance also changed when county voters elected to make the superintendent an elected partisan office rather than a board appointment, a structural shift that took effect with the most recent election cycle. The district has also benefited from a voter-approved sales tax that funded new school construction and safety upgrades across Lee County, though that funding is set to expire and its renewal is an open question.
Fort Myers itself is a city moving through rapid growth. The downtown River District along the Caloosahatchee River is the historic core, walkable by local standards and anchored by cultural events, restaurants, and civic institutions. The broader city extends along major commercial corridors and into large residential subdivisions. Several major employers anchor the local economy, including a regional health system, a cancer-diagnostics company, a national retail company headquartered in the city, and the county school district itself, alongside Florida Gulf Coast University. The city has seen some of the fastest residential construction rates in the country, and downtown in particular has a pipeline of new multifamily developments underway.
Home values in the zip code around the school have come down meaningfully over the past year, sitting below both the state and national medians at current levels, which may interest families thinking about whether housing in this part of Lee County is accessible. Rents have also softened, though at current rates they still represent a substantial share of a typical household's income. Mortgage rates nationally remain in the mid-six percent range.
For a family navigating a placement at PACE, the school's small size and alternative designation are the defining features. The limited academic data available means a parent should go directly to the school with questions about curriculum, daily structure, graduation requirements, and what support systems are in place for students.
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