by: Capers Gay
April 9, 2025
Davenport
Victory Ridge Academy, a public charter school for special-needs children, is opening up a new campus in Davenport.
A campus already exists in Lake Wales, but the population growth of Polk County in general has precipitated a need for expansion. The school’s executive director, Steve Whitaker says “We have such a need in the Davenport area. Not only do we have about 70 kids that we’re busing…They’re on the bus for so long, but just the population growth in general.”
“So I would just drive around all the time, finding, like, churches and then happened to find a grove that was not even for sale. Called the owner, and he was like, ‘Yeah, why not?’ So we ended up getting it for about 50% of the price.” The new campus covers 9 acres and is designed to be more intimate than the spread-out buildings in Lake Wales. To Whitaker, this smaller size is an advantage as the wealth of students and the hands-on assistance they need can be more efficiently accommodated.
To parents of disabled children, it may be something to look into. The school accepts children who require level 4 or level 5 assistance with their education and there is no cost for admittance. With the included behavior programs and therapy services, the idea is to help kids through their education and eventually transition them to the larger world as teenagers. That transition period specifically is key to Whitaker’s aspirations for this new campus.
Funding for Victory Ridge is covered by the state and voluntary donations. This new campus’s gym, Whitaker speculates, could be a one-two punch for extra funding and furthering teens’ development. “It’s just a large building itself. It doesn’t have the bleachers like a traditional gym, so it’s spread out so you can do other events. But then our students can work parking, they can work food service, they can work helping clean up, they can be there.” Whitaker notes that while other schools close on the weekends, Victory Ridge can use this space to rent out events to the community, and have students in their transition program work those events to develop job skills. He elaborates, “We have partnerships with Publix, Hampton Inn, Care Center, AdventHealth. A lot of these groups where our kids are getting internships and getting skill sets to be able to go into the workforce.”
But as Victory Ridge’s staff works tirelessly to prepare students for the future, what of the school’s own future? The plan, as it stands now, is to cover all four corners of Polk County. If the Davenport campus succeeds, perhaps we’ll see more, but how many is determined most importantly by one thing: “the need from the families.” Whitaker says. “If we can help people and we can figure out the means to do it, then why not do it? Why not us do it?”
The new campus is expected to open in August.
