Original Research by School Decision on Pace Center for Girls
PACE Center for Girls in Bradenton is an alternative school serving young women in grades six through twelve, operated under the Manatee County school district. It is a small program by any measure, with an enrollment that fits comfortably in a single building. Nearly the entire student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which tells you something about who this school is designed to reach: girls who are facing economic hardship and, in most cases, circumstances that made a traditional school setting not workable for them.
The school draws students across racial and ethnic groups, with Hispanic girls making up the largest single share, followed by white and Black students, and smaller shares identifying as multiracial. Data on English learner status and special education participation were not reported in the records available, so those are gaps a parent would want to raise directly with the school.
State assessment results were not available for PACE Center, and this is almost certainly a reflection of what the school is rather than a signal of weakness. Alternative settings that serve students who have been out of school, who are navigating crisis situations, or who are re-engaging with formal education are often outside the typical state testing framework in ways that make raw proficiency numbers an unreliable or inapplicable lens. The comparison metrics used for Manatee County districts, including proficiency index, four-year graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism rate, were each flagged as not applicable here for the same reason: the data simply is not present, and a reader should not interpret absence as a poor result.
What PACE Centers do, publicly reported across the network, is provide a gender-responsive, trauma-informed academic and counseling program for girls who are at risk of dropping out or who have already left traditional schools. The Bradenton location sits on 26th Street West, in a part of the city that is more residential and working-class than the riverfront downtown. Bradenton itself is the county seat of Manatee County, a city with a compact, walkable downtown along the Manatee River, a live-work arts district with early-twentieth-century bungalows, and a broader urban fabric that runs along commercial corridors like Cortez Road and U.S. 41. It is a city in active growth, with new apartment construction among the highest volumes in the region in recent years, and a housing market where home values have softened modestly year over year while still sitting below both state and national medians.
For a family considering this school, the relevant questions are not the ones that apply to a comprehensive high school. There are no AP course offerings listed in the data, no extracurricular programs reported, no staffing ratios on file. The program information available here is thin, and a parent should ask the school directly about its academic pathway to a diploma, its counseling and social services model, and what post-secondary supports look like for seniors.
The district context matters some. Manatee County voters renewed a dedicated property tax levy in late 2024 that funds teacher pay supplements, extended instructional time, and career and technical programs across the district. Whether those dollars flow to PACE Center the same way they do to comprehensive schools is another question worth asking. The district has also installed weapon-detection systems at high schools and is building a new high school in Lakewood Ranch, changes that affect the broader system but may have limited direct bearing on a program as small and specialized as this one.
PACE Center is designed for a specific student: a girl in middle or high school years for whom the traditional setting has not worked, who needs academic continuity alongside wraparound support. If that description fits, this is one of the few places in Manatee County structured around that need. If a family is looking at it from a distance and wondering whether it is the right fit, the school itself is the right source for the details that matter most.
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