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District proposes new magnet schools

 The U.S. Department of Education could grant $7-million to transition three Clearwater schools into magnet schools.

By DONNA WINCHESTER
Published June 18, 2006

For the first time in nearly a decade, the Pinellas County school district is poised to create a group of magnet schools open to children from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs.

And for the first time in the district’s history, the plan is to locate the special programs at two elementary schools and a middle school in the northern half of the county.

District officials will submit a proposal this fall to the U.S. Department of Education that could bring as much as $7-million in federal grant money to three Clearwater schools. If the DOE approves the proposal next spring, the three schools — King’s Highway Elementary, Sandy Lane Elementary and Kennedy Middle — would become magnets beginning with the 2007-08 academic year.

Kings Highway would transform itself into a center for medical science and wellness. Sandy Lane would become a “primary years” International Baccalaureate school. Kennedy would start a “middle years” IB program.

Pinellas officials have used Magnet School Assistance Program grants since the early '90s to create magnets at 12 St. Petersburg schools with large numbers of African-American children, including Perkins Elementary and John Hopkins Middle School.

The grant’s purpose is to encourage schools to voluntarily desegregate by creating academic programs aimed at attracting nonminority children.

But while Pinellas has for many years attempted to increase the percentage of nonblack children in south Pinellas schools, emerging population trends have created the need to encourage diversity in north county schools, superintendent Clayton Wilcox said.

“There are more and more Hispanic and Latino families living in north county, as well as more and more African-Americans living in the Clearwater area and beyond,” Wilcox said. “We just want to make sure there are adequate services for all our families. We started looking and saw there were not enough of those kinds of opportunities in north Pinellas.”

The shift in focus comes as a 47-member task force commissioned by the School Board is studying ways to replace the current choice system, which keeps schools integrated by capping black enrollment at 42 percent.

To maintain diversity when the system expires at the end of the next academic year, the task force has discussed broadening the definition of a diversely populated school and creating more magnet schools that would be distributed throughout the county.

The group that is working on the magnet proposal did not purposely choose north Pinellas schools for the grant application, said Charlie Eubanks, Pinellas’ special projects director. In fact, three of the six schools the group recommended to Wilcox — Fairmount Park Elementary, Riviera Middle and Dixie Hollins High — are in south Pinellas.

But because the grant requirements look at a school’s total minority population, the three schools the superintendent chose are good candidates, Eubanks said.

“The idea is to reduce minority isolation,” he said. “We want to add diversity to a school that doesn’t have a high minority population and reduce the minority isolation at a school that does have a high minority population.”

Statistics show that Sandy Lane Elementary, a school with about 525 students, has the highest overall minority population in the district. Forty percent of the children are black, 27 percent are Hispanic, 6 percent are multiracial and 3 percent are Asian.

Similarly, 41 percent of Kings Highway’s 418 children are black, 23 percent are Hispanic, and 10 percent are multiracial.

The numbers aren’t as dramatic at Kennedy, where 22 percent of the children are black and 20 percent are Hispanic. But the trend is moving toward a higher concentration of minority students, Eubanks said.

Despite the federal government’s focus on minority population, the district looked at additional characteristics when it was time to recommend schools, said grant administrator Charlene Einsel.

Kings Highway, Sandy Lane and Kennedy all have many students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, often a sign of poverty, Einsel said. The schools also have high percentages of students with disabilities, and many speak English as a second language.

Another consideration, Einsel said, was the schools’ difficulty in attracting students. In the most recent choice application period, Kings Highway the first choice for only 26 incoming kindergarteners. Sandy Lane was the choice for 31 kindergarteners, while 39 incoming sixth-graders chose Kennedy.

In contrast, Clearwater’s Plumb Elementary attracted 143 children, and Oak Grove Middle School drew 152.

Sandy Lane principal Delores Milton expects the school will be much more popular if it is able to implement a “primary years” International Baccalaureate program. The liberal arts curriculum has a hands-on approach that encourages children to ask questions.

“We see that as a big plus for students, especially when you think of the global society we live in,” Milton said. “We know it’s going to be lots of work, but we’re committed to this because it will be good for kids.”

[Last modified June 18, 2006, 21:20:12]