Last modified 9/18/2008 - 10:23 pm
Originally created 092008
Click-2-Listen
Parents want to hear plans for campuses where there aren't enough students.
By DREW DIXON, Shorelines
About 150 parents packed a "community dialogue" meeting Wednesday night to discuss the threat of some schools closing in southeast Duval County, including three elementary schools at the Beaches.
The meeting was held at Kernan Middle School by the Academic and Community Excellence panel, which has been reviewing scenarios to deal with about 12,000 "empty seats" in Duval County schools. Three other meetings have been held for schools in other areas of the county.
While some schools have been skyrocketing in student populations, the numbers have been plummeting at others, such as Mayport, Joseph Finegan and San Pablo elementary schools.
The panel, made up of parents and other volunteers as well as some school officials, will have more meetings and reviews before making final recommendations to the Duval County School Board, most likely in February. But Wednesday's meeting brought dozens of parents of kids in Beaches elementary schools.
"I feel it's a threat to the school," said Trisha Warner, a Neptune Beach resident who has an 8-year-old son in the second grade at San Pablo. "I want him to get a good education at San Pablo. I also realize that he needs to be prepared for middle and high school and I think San Pablo is the best school to do that."
Warner was among dozens of parents at the meeting whose children attend San Pablo. Many were wearing "We Love San Pablo" stickers.
Warner said the parental support for the school can't be ignored.
"We have a very supportive community. I expect that they're going to stick with it through the whole process and I expect our voices are going to be heard," Warner said.
Doug Ayars, chief operating officer for the school system, said the panel has no recommendations yet. And any recommendations won't be made lightly, he said.
"There will be other meetings in the future where we review this and there will be public hearings," Ayars said. "There are scenarios and options developed by your peers and by the working groups, which you are now are part of that. But there are no recommendations."
Statistics show Mayport, Finegan and San Pablo are under-attended.
Finegan has 397 students, about 62 percent of its capacity. Mayport has 382 students, 47 percent of capacity, and San Pablo has 487 students, about 86 percent of its capacity.
That's dramatically different than some elementary schools just west of the Intracoastal Waterway. Alminacani Elementary School has 983 students, which is 104 percent of capacity. Chets Creek Elementary is one of the most overcrowded elementary schools in the county with 1,248 students, or 127 percent of capacity. The state mandates no school should be operating at over 105 percent capacity.
Neptune Beach City Councilman Fred Lee is one of the volunteers serving on the Academic and Community Excellence work group for the southeast area of the county. He said scenarios range from redrawing of school boundaries to closure of some schools. He said some of the Beaches schools could be closed.
"The hard data shows that's a very realistic possibility," Lee said. "There's definitely an overcapacity of schools to students at the Beaches. Something has to be done."
Lee said he'd like to avoid closing any school, but that that would take serious work.
"How that's done, I'm not sure. Boundaries could be changed to where you draw people from overcapacity schools like in the West Beaches or something like that," said Lee.
The social and residential dynamics at the Beaches have been changing over the past few years, Lee said. Fewer elementary school-aged children are living east of the Intracoastal.
"Projected enrollment for a lot of these schools is not going to go up at the Beach," Lee said. "You've got people with a higher socio-economic situation going on. You don't have quite as many people with kids moving into that area."
In addition, Lee said, the explosive development growth on the Southside and other areas west of the Intracoastal Waterway is overloading many of the current school boundaries with more children than anticipated.
Drew Dixon can also be reached at (904) 249-4947, ext. 6313.
