By Bill Husfelt, Superintendent, Bay District Schools
By now I think everyone knows we’re building a new school at the beach and that we plan to welcome students in kindergarten through second grade, to the A. Gary Walsingham Academy in August of 2021.
What you may not be as familiar with, however, is why this school is necessary and where those students will be coming from.
First, you should know that this school was planned well before the hurricane struck in 2018. We’ve been watching the growth at the beach for quite some time and realized quickly that our schools were approaching capacity. Following the storm, however, we put our new school plans on hold so we could focus on repairing damaged schools throughout the district.
The School Board approved the resurrection of those plans last year and we broke ground this summer on the new school which will be known as A. Gary Walsingham Academy thanks to a very generous donation from Mr. Walsingham and his family. The Walsingham’s donation will be used to bring state-of-the-art technology to the school (not typically funded in a general construction loan) and will assist the school’s leaders in focusing on conservation and environmentalism with their students. We hope to take full advantage of the school’s amazing location on Chip Seal Parkway and use the natural surroundings for immersive learning opportunities for our students.
While the school will open just as a K-2, we plan to add a grade a year until it reaches K-5 status. Going forward, it’s possible that the School Board may decide to add additional buildings to expand the school into the K-8 model that we know our parents love. We’re building the school’s basic infrastructure with that in mind since planning for the future is always our goal.
Since the beginning of this project, we’ve had lots of meetings with officials from the St. Joe Company (who donated the land), the county and the city of Panama City Beach. While the school is not technically in the city limits of PCB, we know that the educational opportunities on the west side of the Hathaway Bridge are very important to city leaders and residents.
Jorge Gonzales, President and CEO of the St. Joe Company, is just as excited about this project as we are. “The construction of the A. Gary Walsingham Academy is a great milestone for Bay County and Panama City Beach. As our communities continue to grow, this brand new school that can serve as many as 800 students will enhance the quality of life for local residents for decades to come. It is truly a project worth celebrating,” he said.
While building a new school is exciting, it also makes people nervous because new schools mean rezoning. In this case, we believe some of the students for the new school will come from the surrounding neighborhoods that are currently zoned for Breakfast Point and Patronis. There’s so much building going on between the new school and BPA that we have no doubt the new construction will house more than enough students for a new school.
In fact, according to a News Herald article from last year, the beach is experiencing exponential growth with a list of committed projects that include 2,678 apartment units, 989 condominium/townhomes, 408 subdivision lots, and 51 commercial developments (https://www.newsherald.com/news/20190803/pcb-island-seeing-unprecedented-real-estate-growth). In fact, the level of construction activity on the beach right now leads city officials to predict, in the same article, the “development of 12,000 additional homes by 2029.”
Please rest assured that the entire rezoning process is all done in the ‘sunshine’ (which means at advertised School Board meetings that the public can attend) and members of the public are invited to attend every workshop and public hearing. At those meetings, we will also discuss opportunities for current BPA or Patronis students to be ‘grandfathered in’ to their current schools as we have always done in the past. We plan to get the rezoning process started after the holidays and we will post meeting and speaking opportunities on our website and social media pages.
We look forward to welcoming the Walsingham Wahoos to our Bay District Schools family!
