Transcript from 9-10-26 School Board Workshop

Editor’s note: This page contains the supplied snippet, not a full transcript of the workshop. It was generated with NVIDIA's Parakeet TDT from the official MP3 recording, so small discrepancies are possible. It has been formatted into paragraphs for readability; no substantive edits have been made.

District presentation

We're going to move to the next recommendation, which is multifaceted and involves multiple schools in the Tarpon Springs community. So this recommendation would open a fundamental K-8 school on the Tarpon Springs Middle School campus beginning in the 27-28 school year next year. And it would involve closing Tarpon Springs Middle School as a traditional neighborhood school and closing Tarpon Springs Fundamental Elementary School as a standalone school now.

At the end of this recommendation, there would be one school that would have no students in it at the end, and that would be Tarpon Springs Fundamental Elementary School. So the recommendation to create this K-8 fundamental comes off of certainly community feedback and the success of other K-8 schools in our district, in particular the 1K8 Fundamental, which is one of our most popular programs.

As the board is aware now, the Tarpon Springs Fundamental Elementary School, very small, it has a an enrollment of 261 students, and its utilization rate is actually well above 100% as we fill every single classroom all day long there. But it's also has a long waiting list, and there's been interest to expand that program.

And as the board knows, students in fundamental schools are guaranteed a seat at middle school in fundamental. And because there is no real North County Fundamental Middle School, the closest school that students from Tarpon Springs Fundamental go to is Clearwater Fundamental Middle School. We don't provide transportation and this is one of the few spots where students access PSTA routes to get to school and and you've probably all seen them waiting along alternate nineteen and other places for those PSTA buses.

But it is a a long distance from Tarpon Springs to Clearwater, certainly in rush hour traffic. So this creates seats at this new K eight for students to matriculate there, as well as then, since they won't be going to Clearwater Fundamental, it opens up seats in the Clearwater neighborhood for additional seats at Clearwater Fundamental Middle School, which is also a very popular choice.

At the end of the day, we anticipate that Tarpon Springs K-8 will have 910 students. That will be about 480 students in the K-5 and roughly 570 students in the middle school. So all of the students at the current Tarpon Springs Fundamental Elementary School will be offered a seat in the new K-8, and we will meet with families to see if they want that seat.

And then the remaining elementary seats would be open for the district application program process. So roughly 200, 220 seats would be available. So that's adding fundamental seats North County in our most geographically isolated region. Then of course it adds the middle school seats and as we meet with the Tarpon Springs Middle School campus, we will offer to all sixth and seventh grade families seats in the new fundamental K eight if they want to participate in the fundamental program.

That of course includes parent involvement, the following of rules, signing the planners, all the things that go along with that, and providing transportation, because our fundamental programs do not have transportation to the school. So parents will have to make that decision if they want to participate in the fundamental at the K-8.

In this, the Tarpon Springs school zone will be the middle school zone will be rezoned to Carwise Middle School. You may recall when we opened Oldsmar K-8, there was some concern from CarWise about taking students away and how robust can the middle school be? And certainly the expansion of East Lake Middle School, adding some seats there, might also detract from that traditional zone.

But now adding the Tarpon Springs Middle School zone to that creates a much larger zone for carwise to draw from. For families that live in the Tarpon Springs, East Lake, Oldsmar area, they now have really four different and unique choices for middle school. The K-8 at Oldsmar, the traditional program at Carwise Middle School, the Academy of Engineering at Eastlake, and then this new K-8 fundamental.

So four very different unique decisions for families and options there. With the change at Carwise Middle School, certainly enrollment will increase. In our document that we put out there, it's difficult to say exactly what that looks like because families will have to make choices who wants to stay at Tarpon Springs Middle School, who wants to go to CarWISE, who might take advantage of those other options.

But we don't anticipate utilization rates getting anywhere above 90% for sure at CarWise Middle School. There are some capital improvements. This is part of that $7 million in capital improvements that will need to be made at Tarpon Springs Middle School. And those include upgrading bathrooms in particular for primary grades.

So we like to have bathrooms in the classroom for primary grades. So doing that, installing playgrounds, and a few space upgrades for elementary classrooms on the first floor. We have, of course, mapped out the building, what can be primary on the first floor, second floor, all three buildings that are on the campus?

and obviously we have K-8 schools where that work has already been done as well. and so this recommendation would be for next school year and we for every one of these recommendations as we go forward, as communications go out to the school and to families, have a number of opportunities for the public, our faculty members, and the community to give input back to us.

And so I won't, as we go through every single one of these, announce the date and time of every one of those meetings. Those are shared publicly on our website, and every family is getting that in an email to them this morning. But for example, just to s to understand the cadence, at Tarpon Springs Fundamental Elementary School we'll have a meeting for families in the community on September fifteenth at six P.M. next week, and then on Wednesday night, September 16th at 6 p.m. at Tarpon Springs Middle School.

And then separate faculty meetings for the faculty will be occurring in the next five to six days. And of course, each of these faculties were met with by staff this morning to announce that. So they weren't hearing it from this meeting, but hearing it personally from our staff.

Then from there, after that first community meeting, we'll go back in a couple weeks after that, pretty much the first week of October, after the board has discussion about the recommendations here's from that first community meeting, and then have a second community meeting where we're able to answer additional questions that families have and start to map out for them how they would make the choices for their children for next school year.

Unlike when we did cross bio and distant which was in the second semester and after the school choice window, all of these recommendations are intentionally being made at the start of the school year, not to be disruptive, but to give families all of the choices that we have available for them, give them time to process it, go to school tours, visit the open houses, and really take the time to make thoughtful decisions along that process.

The last thing before I I pause for questions on this recommendation is on each of these recommendations today. There could be both policy adjustments and policy 2250, which is the magnet and fundamental policy, and then also policy fifty-one twenty, which is the school zone policy. So as we bring these things forward to you in October for a board vote, we will be bringing both sets of policies with us.

So in this case, we're opening a new fundamental school, adding seats, closing in existing fundamental school, all of those things would take place in policy twenty two fifty 2250, and the regular things that go with fundamental would be in there. There's a proximity preference per school board policy, there's no transportation, all the things that go with that would be in that side of the policy.

And then in the other policy, 5120, would be the school zone changes. So in this case, it's rezoning Tarpon Springs Middle School into CarWise Middle School Zone. So these policies would come to you at the same time for a first reading in October and then a second reading in November.

So I'm going to pause, Madam Chair, for questions about the this set of recommendations in Tarpon Springs.

Mrs. Blacksburgh

Thank you. Can you review real quick with the recommendations regarding students that are currently so sixth and seventh graders currently at Tarpon Springs Middle School?

District response

Yes. So students who currently attend Tarpon Springs Middle School may do so in one of two ways.

They may be there as a zone student, right? It's their neighborhood school, or they may be there through the district application process through the Leadership Conservatory for the Arts. The Leadership Conservatory will stay there in its normal way and and people who apply to that will be part of the fundamental program similarly to the gifted program at third grade marshal.

You apply, but you're also in the gifted program. So all of those families in sixth and seventh grade, when we meet with them, first next week for the general overview, but then the second meeting will be to say, here's your choice, you can stay, and if you do, you have to participate in the fundamental program.

So you have to agree to the parent parts of that and provide transportation. Or you will, your zone school would be Carwise Middle School, right? You also have these other choices in these neighborhoods, right? And we'll kind of walk through each of those choices and the process timeline for that.

But for sixth and seventh graders, if they want to stay and participate in the K-8, we will ask parents to opt into that ahead of the district application process. So they will be guaranteed a seat to stay if they want to, and we will add that in before we open up the seats to the rest of the community in the district application process.

It's a kind of a one-time opt-in for families, and then after that, it's just the regular process that anybody would go through.

Mrs. Hine

Thank you. And so we're opening the K-8 on the Tarpin Middle School campus. So that means also during this school year the necessary renovations would be made correct.

To allow for the younger students while during the current academic year.

District response

That's correct. Tarpon Springs Middle School right now, 610 students. It's at about 52% utilization. So there are plenty of open spaces on that campus right now.

So as minor construction needs to happen to put bathrooms and classrooms, there will be some shifting. And you will see if the board approves this in October, immediately the those capital dollars on your agenda for approval for a construction firm to come in and do that work this year.

Mrs. Hine

And then raising the topic of communications to families. So I heard you say that today, if you could just review again what families, so staff, families, what kinds of communications they're receiving when, and then also what's available online. We'll start with that.

District response

Sure. So this morning we had faculty meetings at every school that had a direct impact, and when I say direct, I mean a major program change, a closure, something like that, to announce it to faculty face-to-face.

We also had meetings with any principal who might be impacted because of school boundary changes, their school may not be changing, but they may be impacted because of those zoning changes, say at Carwise Middle School. And then this morning, starting at about 9.30 and then running probably still now are messages going out to families at every single school that has an impact, and then a general message to every family in the community and on our social media sites and other places that just announces all of the recommendations.

Live on our website now is a video message from me that goes through all the recommendations, has a frequently asked questions section, there's a school locator that you can input your address and see if your address has been has had any zoning changes as a result So all of those communications are going out currently, Mrs. Hine.

And then in those communications, if your school is directly impacted and we're having community meetings in the next week, two weeks, it lists the date, time, location of those community meetings so that families know what's coming forward. And then if there's your schools facing closure, we have a second community meeting that's also in there.

On the staff side, the staff gets a separate email with the staff meeting location. That's not a public meeting, that's for staff to go over the HR policies. And as we go through the recommendations, the HR policies are very different for every every site.

So for example at East Lake Middle School, there's really no change, right? There's no change to staff. There's in fact we'll be adding staff because when you have students you need to add staff. In this case, both of these are closures. So a closure has a different HR perspective and it's different in the teacher contract and the PESPA and SEIU contracts versus a transfer or movement of a school.

And so all of those things will be worked through with staff over the course of the next several weeks as HR meets with those individuals.

Board member

And if people are not a parent or staff member at the affected schools, how can they find out when and where the community meetings are?

District response

All of those are listed on our website. They're all in this packet that's now posted, and we are sending that out through all of our regular communications channels, so to all of our newsletter recipients, to all of our social media channels. So if you are following the district in any way, shape, or form, you will receive notification.

Now will you have to maybe click on something to find the individual meeting that you want to find? Of course, but it's all being pushed out to the community.

Board member

Thank you. I have a just one question regarding this. For the elementary students who are currently attending Tarpon Springs Elementary and knowing that some families may not want to send their child to the fundamental, what other options are available that are comparable or better for the Tarpon Springs Elementary.

I have a map here, I see Sunset Hills, but I'm not quite sure of the expansion of what those schools are.

District response

Sure. So to be clear, I don't want to confuse anyone. We have two different schools. We have Tarpon Springs Elementary, we have Tarpon Springs Fundamental Elementary School.

Tarpon Springs Elementary School has no recommended changes. So it it continues as normal in its same spot, same zone, no change. Now, do those families have a new fundamental option nearby? They do, and they would apply for that like any other family would do through the regular district application process.

The fundamental, Tarpon Springs Fundamental Elementary School, would have that automatic to opt-in if they want to continue.