As Lakeland students returned to classrooms Thursday for the first day of the 2026-27 school year, one group walked through the doors knowing they were making history.
The Class of 2027 is the first class with the opportunity to complete its entire kindergarten-through-12th-grade education in the Lakeland School System, having entered kindergarten when the district opened in 2014.
While last spring marked Lakeland Preparatory School’s first graduating class, Lakeland Superintendent Dr. Ted Horrell said this year’s milestone offers another opportunity for the district and community to reflect on how far the school system has come.
“Between our first graduating class in May and the first group of students who started Kindergarten under the LSS banner entering their senior year this year, I feel like it’s a great opportunity for our staff and community to reflect on how far we’ve come as a school system,” Horrell said.
For the first time since the district’s founding, Lakeland Schools enters a school year without adding a new grade level, campus or major organizational expansion. Rather than signaling an end to growth, Horrell sees it as the beginning of a new chapter.
“This being the first year that we are not growing structurally or organizationally puts me in the mindset that we are really just getting started in terms of what we can accomplish and become,” he said.
Now operating as a complete K-12 school system, the district is turning its focus from building schools to building on its success.
Horrell said the district’s guiding motto, “Learn. Grow. Lead.”, adopted by the School Board before the first year of operation, remains as meaningful today as it was more than a decade ago.
“I’m very proud of the ‘Learn Grow Lead’ motto that our School Board adopted before our first year of operation because I think it’s as relevant now as it was then,” Horrell said. “Our students are doing those things, and we will continue to do them as well.”
As the Class of 2027 begins its final year, its members carry a distinction no other class can claim. Their journey has paralleled the growth of Lakeland Schools itself—from the district’s inaugural kindergarten class in 2014 to becoming the first students with the opportunity to complete the entire K-12 experience in the school system they helped grow alongside.
