By Bill Husfelt, Superintendent, Bay District Schools
By now I hope you’ve heard that we’re getting a new school on the beach when A. Gary Walsingham Academy opens in August of 2021 for students in pre-kindergarten through second grade. We anticipate adding a grade a year to the school until it reaches K-5 status. At some point in the future, board members could decide to add middle school grades, which would make A. Gary Walsingham a K-8 facility. This school, which will have a Wahoo mascot, will focus on conservationism and environmentalism to take full advantage of the amazing location which was donated by the St. Joe Company.
But before we get too far along in that conversation, we need to talk a little bit about zoning. Obviously, we’re building a new school based upon anticipated growth and we need to rezone a few beach neighborhoods to ensure that Breakfast Point is no longer at, or over, capacity and that the new school has an adequate zone.
Rezoning is always difficult because, in my experience, most parents are pretty happy with the school their child attends and change is hard. Rezoning is also challenging because neighborhoods, and roads, are not always aligned equitably and natural boundaries can be hard to find.
In this case, all of the students for the new school will be coming from areas previously zoned for BPA due to the exponential growth in that area. Likewise, there’s a huge development planned adjacent to Walsingham Academy and several hundred new apartments are being constructed. We know that this area will quickly experience significant growth and that’s why we’re so excited that the School Board had the foresight to begin construction on the new school this year. That project was slated to begin before the hurricane but, as you know, new construction was delayed so we could focus on rebuilding hurricane-damaged facilities.
At the January 12th board workshop, new zone boundaries were discussed and later approved at a meeting for advertising. As you can see from the graphic attached, we’ve selected a highly-concentrated area of students to pull out of the BPA zone to create the zone for the new school.
Additionally, many parents want their children to attend a new school so parents in all school zones will have the opportunity to apply for out-of-zone attendance and, eventually, hardship waivers, for the new school.
Conversely, we also know that some parents will NOT want to leave BPA for the new school … particularly if they have a fourth grader at BPA (not eligible currently for the new K-2) and a kindergartener. We completely understand the challenge that would be associated with two elementary school students at different schools and we will do ALL we can to accommodate “grandfathering” students into BPA as long as space is available.
There will be a public hearing on the new zone (date and time TBA). Stakeholders are welcome to attend and board members are always willing to listen to suggestions and concerns.
I know that change is hard for many people and changing schools for entire neighborhoods is a momentous adjustment. However, as I’ve seen in the past, everything generally works out and parents are always excited when their students have a chance to become part of the founding student body at a brand new school.
