Inside Manatee County’s hands-on learning lab that could boost literacy rates
The School District of Manatee County is trying to improve early literacy with a new learning lab, but a charter school company wants to take space in the building.
The Soar Lab, which opened last month in the Sara Scott Harllee Center, gives the district’s Soar in 4 program a physical location that provides hands-on learning programs for families at little-to-no cost.
However, Miami-based charter school company Mater Academy Inc. is targeting the center as one of two Manatee County facilities the academy wants to take over as part of the state’s “Schools of Hope” law. The law allows charter school companies to use underused facilities as “co-location” sites.
“On our end, we will focus on making sure we respond to any valid letter that comes in, noting the wonderful programs that we have on our campus that maybe aren’t noted,” Superintendent Laurie Breslin said at a recent board workshop.
District leaders see the Soar Lab as a crucial part of the district’s efforts to improve early childhood development and literacy rates, which the district is making a priority with a new leader at the helm.
Lab provides early childhood learning opportunities
The Soar Lab opened its doors at 6423 Ninth St. E., Bradenton, in September. It provides a physical location for the Soar in 4 program, which aims to “ensure children from families of all races, ethnicities, incomes, abilities and languages have the opportunities and support they need for success in school,” the program website states.
The lab is a collaboration between the School District of Manatee County and local philanthropists dedicated to early childhood education, said Sheila Halpin, the district’s director of early childhood education and early learning.
District students from pre-kindergarten to third grade can get access to the Soar Lab for free, accompanied by one adult. District staff can also use the space with their child, and children from birth to four years old can get in for free with one adult.
Children aged 4-years-old to third grade who don’t fit those criteria can get in for $10 with an adult. Open play hours are listed on the Soar Lab’s website and Facebook.
Learning starts before the children enter the lab. Outside is a trail of common nursery rhymes on plaques that parents can walk through with their children, teaching them how to sound out the words. There are also devices that translate the rhymes into different languages.
Inside, families find hallways and classrooms filled with exhibits — a map of Manatee County, a wall that teaches children how to measure, an engineering room with 3-D printers and an art gallery with a performance stage.
“We compare ourselves to a children’s museum…but we’re different because everything we do is tied to a learning standard,” Halpin said.
Each exhibit has a sign near it that says, “Talk, Play, Learn,” and shows parents how the game or hands-on learning experience ties back to learning standards.
For example, rubber boots are affixed to a wall, and blocks with different types of letters are collected below. The “Talk, Play, Learn” cards help guide parents on how to effectively use the exhibit to ensure their child is also learning.
That exhibit is tied to a Florida Early Learning and Development Standard, which is a child being able to recognize alphabetic and print letters.
Staff at the Soar Lab are around and can help facilitate how the families interact with the exhibits to get the most out of the experience.
“Each family is unique with what will help them with their child’s development,” said Angela Knapek, the Soar Lab coordinator. “It’s wonderful to see the families come in and enjoy the space.”
There’s also the center’s “tinkering space” that includes 3-D printers, individual work stations and a space for children to craft. One of the recent projects gave children the opportunity to utilize recyclable materials like paper towel rolls to create art projects.
Jean Heredia and her daughter, Carolina, 3, frequent the Soar Lab about three times a week. She said the space has provided the family a place to spend time together while also learning.
“This is so great to have in our neighborhood. It’s such a great community resource,” Heredia said. “I think every neighborhood should have a Soar Lab because it’s such a great place to learn and have fun.”
When families leave the lab, staff ask that they write down something they learned on a sticky note and add it to the collection near the front door. That’s one way staff are able to see how the new lab has already helped bring hands-on learning to families.
The lab is the newest addition to the district’s Soar in 4 program, which started about 12 years ago, according to Halpin. Halpin said the district had a third-party review of the Soar in 4 program a couple of years ago that interviewed parents about program outcomes.
“Being in existence for 12 years, we’ve seen a lot of success with our Soar in 4 programs,” Halpin said. “Parents reported that they were more prepared to help their children at home, they felt more comfortable in their ability to support their child’s learning at home and they learned new ways to create learning-building moments at home.”
Goal to improve early literacy rates
In a recent interview with the Bradenton Herald, Breslin said one of her priorities in her new role is to improve early testing scores.
Manatee County’s proficiency levels are around the state average, which was 55% last year. According to the 2024 data, almost 100,000 third-graders across the state were not reading at grade level.
The lowest performing was Gadsden County at 37% proficient, while St. John’s County had the highest reading proficiency with 76%. Sarasota County was the second-highest performing county at 68% proficiency.
According to data from the Florida Department of Education (DOE), Manatee County third-graders have been testing around the 50% proficiency level for the past five years. The third-grade proficiency scores over the past five years have been:
- 2020-2021: 50%
- 2021-2022: 47%
- 2022-2023: 50%
- 2023-2024: 54%
- 2024-2025: 54%
Over the past five years, Manatee County proficiency levels were just above the state average, but Breslin has set a goal of over 60% every year.
One of the ways Breslin said she hoped to improve literacy scores is a stronger emphasis on voluntary pre-kindergarten, and she said data shows students who go through a VPK program score higher in the third-grade assessment.
Florida education data shows the correlation between students who participated in VPK and reading proficiency scores.
Last year, about 67% of students who had completed VPK could read at grade-level, but that number drops to 42%for students who did not participate in VPK. The previous year had similar results.
According to Halpin, children with increased vocabulary at younger ages are better prepared for VPK and kindergarten. At the Soar Lab, families can build early literacy skills through the programs and “Talk, Play, Learn” exhibits, thus preparing them for VPK. The Soar Lab lobby also has computers for families to register for VPK programs.
Physical space necessary for Soar program
The Soar Lab is a product of the district’s Soar in 4 program, which started about 12 years ago specifically designed to improve early childhood literacy, Halpin said.
“We have seen that our 4-year-olds, specifically in Title I communities, were coming to class language deficient,” Halpin said about how the Soar in 4 program came to life.
Having a physical space allowed district staff to grow the program. Everything around the lab was purchased with the help of philanthropists and community members.
“After 12 years, the next evolution for Soar in 4 was a physical space,” Halpin said. “Families were asking for more, but we didn’t have a physical space. This is our gift to Manatee County.”
Before the lab opened, Soar in 4 would host programs throughout the county at libraries and spaces like The Bishop Museum of Science and Nature in downtown Bradenton.
“We’re still out in the community,” Halpin said. “It’s just deeper (at the Soar Lab). We weren’t able to have the exhibits like we do here.”
To prepare for having their own physical space, Halpin said staff visited children’s museums across the county to gather insights and get ideas for what types of exhibits to include while also emphasizing the learning components.
“We knew we wanted to have that twist to it, tying it back to standards,” Halpin said.
It took about 16 months for the district to fill the Soar Lab, and staff want to continue growing the space. They are currently looking for donors to expand their backyard space.
Charter expansion threatens Soar Lab, district says
Earlier this month, the Miami-based charter school company Mater Academy Inc. sent a notice to the School District of Manatee County identifying the Sara Scott Harllee Center and Lincoln Memorial Middle School as possible schools to take over for “co-location.”
School district officials say the notices were sent prematurely, before the state’s “Schools of Hope” law goes into effect, but are ready to respond to the notices and any others that the district may receive.
“I feel confident that we’re ready to respond as a district. I don’t want it to be construed as an emergency for Manatee County,” Breslin said at a recent board workshop.
The Schools of Hope law gives several charter school companies the ability to co-locate at underused facilities throughout the state. The charter schools would be able to use the facilities, but the public school that owns the building would be responsible for paying utilities, busing, custodial services and other operational costs.
Jamie Carson, a spokesperson for the school district, previously told the Bradenton Herald that a facility’s capacity number isn’t the full picture, specifically for a site like the Sara Scott Harllee Center and the Soar Lab.
The Sara Scott Harllee Center’s capacity is more “fluid,” Carson said, due to how it is used.
Having a physical space is crucial for the Soar in 4 program, which the district hopes will contribute to the goal of improving early reading testing scores. The Soar Lab, which is less than a month old, is a space the school district created for families to improve early childhood education, and staff don’t want to lose the space.
“We’re hoping that this is a legacy project,” Halpin said.
This story was originally published October 27, 2025 at 5:50 AM.
