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New school programs are welcome additions

By TIMES EDITORIAL
Published April 19, 2007

Good news: A blossoming of educational opportunities for North Pinellas youths is on the way. Organizers of two new programs likely will be swamped with eager parents and their children ready to take immediate advantage of the new opportunities.

The St. Petersburg Times reported that Curtis Fundamental Elementary School in Clearwater will move into larger digs, permitting more children to enroll there.

Fundamental elementary schools, which have a strong curriculum, tougher rules than regular elementary schools and mandatory parental involvement, are so popular that they usually have long waiting lists. Students on those lists have little hope of ever getting in.

In the 2008-09 school year, Curtis Fundamental will move into the larger building now occupied by Dunedin Elementary School on Beltrees Street in Dunedin. A new building is being constructed for Dunedin Elementary, to open this fall. The old building will undergo a year of renovations and upgrades before the Curtis Fundamental students move in.

Curtis students will have to travel farther north to attend school, but the move will allow 80 more students to get in. That may not seem like a lot, but parents on the waiting list will rejoice at the expanded opportunity.

The second program that offers new options for North Pinellas students is a partnership between the Pinellas County school district and St. Petersburg College that will allow high school juniors and seniors to take their classes at SPC Clearwater.

Students will earn both high school and college credits for the courses they take, but they also will be assigned a home high school where they can be involved in extracurricular activities and attend high school graduation ceremonies.

The so-called Early College Program, which is free and open to any junior or senior in Pinellas, will begin in the fall and enroll 250 students the first year. Information sessions on the new program will be held April 24, 26 and 27 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Arts Auditorium at SPC-Clearwater on Drew Street.

North Pinellas County is growing younger over time. More parents and their children are looking for ambitious education programs that will prepare students for an increasingly competitive world.

North Pinellas County has not been blessed with as many of the school district's new programs as South Pinellas - for example, Pinellas has five fundamental elementary schools, but only two are in North Pinellas - and parents are looking to the School Board to fix what they consider an inequity.

The clamor for more fundamental schools, especially, has been growing. North Pinellas has one fundamental middle school, Coachman Fundamental, and no fundamental high school. Parents are attracted to the schools' back-to-basics approach, low disciplinary statistics and high academic achievement.

As waiting lists for fundamental and magnet schools grow, the School Board should seize opportunities - as they have at Curtis and SPC - to expand educational programming for North Pinellas students.

[Last modified April 19, 2007, 07:26:31]