Board smart to start over in school rezoning process
Published June 8, 2003
The Hernando County School Board made a sound decision when it decided last week to abandon a piecemeal plan to rezone school districts for the purpose of easing student crowding at Pine Grove and J.D. Floyd elementary schools. By regrouping and trying again, the board has delayed a challenging and unpopular task for at least the next school year.
But the job still needs to be done, and several decisions the board makes in the coming months will determine the difficulty of the undertaking.
The School Board got off to a good start when it instructed superintendent Wendy Tellone to form an advisory committee of residents and school representatives. Coupled with a $62,000 computer software program the board purchased, parents should expect that virtually any proposal will be an improvement on the autocratic, ill-conceived ideas the board has considered the past two months.
Before the committee and school district staff can move forward, however, the School Board needs to address two unresolved issues:
Will the next school that will be built, a K-8 facility on Elgin Boulevard near Barclay Avenue, be a so-called neighborhood school that will accept students from a predetermined zone? Or will it be designated a magnet school, which will enroll students from all over the county who wish to participate in a specialized curriculum, much like Chocachatti Elementary School on California Street?
Some board members advocate making it a magnet school. To accomplish the goal of siphoning students from crowded J.D. Floyd and Pine Grove, they are looking at the possibility of establishing a weighted lottery system. In other words, the board would designate that 300 or so of the 1,200 available seats at the new school would be reserved in the lottery for students from J.D. Floyd and Pine Grove. The rest would be open to all other students, also chosen by luck of the draw.
That probably would solve an immediate problem, but it might not be the best long-term solution. Depending on how dramatically the district lines are redrawn, it might be better to make it a zone-specific school.
In addition, making the Elgin Boulevard structure a magnet school will place added pressure on administrators for it to succeed. This will be the district's first K-8 school, which is an experiment that concerns some parents who worry about first-graders and eighth-graders co-existing on the same campus. Even though K-8 schools have flourished in other counties, it may take a year or two for students and parents to work out the kinks in this new program.
Combining the relatively new programs could be a formidable challenge.
The Elgin Boulevard school is slated to open in 2005. The School Board already knows it will need to open another school, either K-8 or K-5, about two years later. To perceptively rezone school districts now, the superintendent and advisory committee should know the approximate location of that school.
The board had hoped to build that school on Deer Street, just off Linden Drive in Spring Hill, where most of the students that age live. But because the County Commission wouldn't rezone the land to accommodate that plan, the School Board is still shopping for real estate.
It is growing increasingly difficult to find tracts of land that are large enough, zoned appropriately, on adequate roads and affordable. Residents likely will pay dearly to meet those requirements.
That said, the board probably should move up its timetable to select the site for that school because it could have considerable bearing on the overall rezoning. The staff and the committee of parents need that information to do their jobs effectively.
Not very many people like rezoning. At best, the change is inconvenient; at worst, it can disrupt a child's learning. But it cannot be avoided in a burgeoning region like Hernando County. The best that can be hoped for is that rezoning occur as infrequently as possible. That is why it is so important for the School Board to do all it can to anticipate growth trends and make its decisions with acumen and foresight.
