When Danielle Brewer says she understands what struggling students and their families go through, she isn’t just speaking as an educator with three decades of experience.

No, she speaks as someone who has lived — and overcome — early learning difficulties herself.

Brewer, unanimously named Marion County’s new superintendent of schools by the School Board in late February, was a child who couldn’t read, write or even effectively communicate verbally. She and her twin sister, Dominique, started out life being neglected and abused. They were placed in foster care, and it wasn’t until they moved in with the woman who would become their adoptive mother at age 4 that they were read to aloud.

“My sister and I used Cryptophasia, commonly referred to as ‘twin talk,’ to communicate with each other,” Brewer wrote in a 2019 column in the Ocala Star-Banner. “We survived many years of neglect and abuse that resulted in a misdiagnosis of intellectual disability. We now know the diagnosis was a direct result of lack of exposure to literacy and the spoken word. Those moments — those numerous hours that Anne Conner spent reading to us — changed Dominique and me forever.” Dominique is also a career educator in Lake County.

Today, Brewer, who oversees the Marion County Public Schools, its 50-plus schools and the education of its 46,000 students, says one of her top priorities is to create an “early warning system” for students who are struggling or come from similar childhood situation as she did.

“We want to track students from Day 1,” she said.

Brewer was given the superintendent’s job after the School Board abandoned a national search in December that had attracted seven applicants, both local and from out of town. The School Board made that decision because the school system showed improvement in broad range of academic measures.

Among upticks in performance in 2025 were:

• The graduation rate was 85 percent, up from 81 percent 10 years earlier.

• Test scores for Exceptional Student Education, or ESE, enrollees was up 3.2 percent.

• English Language Learners’ scores climbed 3.4 percent.

• Scores in Language Arts improved at every level, performance in biology and civics outpaced the state overall, and in Advanced Placement, Marion saw more tests taken with higher scores achieved.

Brewer says it is just a start.

Among her top priorities as the new superintendent, in addition to establishing a stronger early warning system, is to improve attendance — the goal is to average 95 percent each day, compared with the current 92 percent rate – and to provide “high quality teaching.”

In a recent “State of the Schools” speech to an Ocala Metro Chamber and Economic Partnership gathering, Brewer said chronic absenteeism is a critical focus of her administration because “attendance is connection,” especially for students who need support beyond academics — everything from food to clothing to mental health care.

“One significant issue we face as a community is chronic absenteeism – which the state of Florida defines as missing more than 10 percent of the school year,” Brewer told the CEP crowd. “Last year, nearly one-third of our graduating seniors met that definition.”

Other priorities include putting new focus on low socioeconomic students, who typically do not have the resources at home to help them excel in school. Those students also tend to have more academic assistance needs and discipline issues.

Brewer said expanding the number of youngsters enrolled in the free Voluntary Prekindergarten Program, or VPK, is key to students’ long-term success.  Currently, VPK is available at every elementary school in Marion County and, again, is free. But because of transportation issues or simply parental indifference, about half of eligible prekindergartners in Marion County do not participate. Brewer said those who do take part in VPK show double the academic growth of those who do not.

In higher grades, Brewer said she wants to offer ever more opportunities for students to prepare them for life after school, and she is working with the business community to develop programs that will help assure that.

“Every student has a dream, regardless of background,” she said. “Every student has a dream, regardless of their situation. And every student has a dream, regardless of capability.

“Our job is to meet them where they are, supporting, encouraging and lifting them to reach the dreams they imagine for themselves.”

As a mother of two now-grown products of the Marion County Public Schools and a former high school principal (North Marion High), Brewer believes our high schools have the tools and programs to help our children achieve those dreams, whether they seek to pursue a college degree or to learn a trade.

She called the career and technical development programs in each high school “incredibly impressive” and worthy of more support.

“We’re still the best thing for high school students,” she told The Marion Mosaic.

Brewer’s challenges, however, stretch beyond the classroom and academics. She takes the helm of Marion County schools as the community is ranked by the Census bureau as the fastest-growing city in the country. Two new elementary schools – Winding Oaks and Ross Prairie, in southwest Marion – are set to open this fall, while a new 2,300-student high school, South Marion, near Marion Oaks, is set for an August 2027 opening.

Moreover, the 1-mill special school property tax that voters have approved in 2014, 2018 and in 2022 is up for renewal this year, and Brewer hopes voters will once again give it their support. The tax generates more than $41 million a year for the schools.

“A community that cares about its students is a community,” she said, “that is investing in its future, and one that extends beyond budgets, buildings and buses. … When students succeed, our community succeeds.”

Brewer also faces reducing the district’s employment rolls by more than 50 positions because of budget limitations, in part because of the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding tied to the COVID-19 pandemic that have disappeared in the past couple of years.

Finally, Brewer is proud that she now leads a school district where she made her career and in which she raised her own children. She said she is working hard to meet as many people as possible in and out of the school system to explain her plans and her goals. She believes she has an eager and accepting audience in both cases.

“The general public wants our school system to be great,” she said.

As for her colleagues within the school system, she believes her having come up through the system gives her a cleared-eyed vision of what its needs and problems are, as well as what its strengths and successes are.

“My first thought was how excited I was for our school community and for our community, that a local leader would be at the helm, who truly knows the students, teachers, schools and community better than an outside candidate,” Brewer said.

For someone who started out disadvantaged and scholastically challenged, Brewer said her overriding goals is simple:

“We want to teach every child to succeed.”