Parents are weighing in as Orange County Public Schools considers closing seven schools due to low enrollment numbers and budget costs.
Close to a hundred people gathered Wednesday at Eccleston Elementary in Orlando for the School’s Consolidation and Rezoning Meeting. These meetings for all the potentially affected schools began last week and wrap up Thursday.
Aside from Eccleston, other elementary schools that might be closed include Bonneville, Orlo Vista, Chickasaw, McCoy and Meadow Woods along with Union Park Middle School.
The district said Eccleston is built for 684 students, but right now, only 334 students are enrolled. The current proposal is to rezone students to Washington Shores Elementary.
While the school board has yet to make a final decision on the closures, parents like Michelle Harris worry for the wellbeing of her kids if it happens. Harris is the president of the PTA and has twin boys in the second grade. She also started a petition for parents to try and keep Eccleston open.
“As parents, we have to figure out how to prepare our second graders to transition to a new environment,” Harris said. “I'm more of a family that's pretty much established, so my children have a routine, so this is going to completely take them out of their everyday routine. I just don't want it to affect them emotionally, affect their mental health. They'll be losing their friends, their teachers, just having the feel of a culture here at this school to be placed into a different environment.”
At the meeting Wednesday, members of OCPS presented potential rezoning plans and answered questions from the public about the process and how families and students might be impacted.
For parents like Courney Williams, she is worried for her third grader who walks to school on most days. Now, he may have to walk longer and unfamiliar routes if they are rezoned to another school.
“They'll need to provide a bus over here for these children,” Williams said. “That road out there is dangerous, and I just hate to see on the news that somebody got hit. This is elementary. This is not like high school and middle school. This is elementary.”
OCPS director of student enrollment Stacy Neil said she understands the frustrations from families, and that the district is listening.
“Nothing has been voted on, nothing has been decided,” Neil said. “Even though, in parents' minds, this is a done deal, it's not so. We have people involved that can answer questions from transportation and things like this, but without definite lines and definite answers and approval, nothing is (final).”
The district is collecting feedback on the rezoning plans and encouraged parents to attend future meetings as the board considers the closures in the coming months. A link to the meetings, feedback forms and rezoning plans can be found here.
Neil said OCPS will give people “options to respond or comment or give their opinions ideas, whether they like it, they hate it…and then we bring all of that to the school board members at the next meeting, which is the Rural Development, and they can come even there, even after they've presented petitions or surveys, and they can actually speak at the meeting to the other board members.”
Other concerns from attendees included what would happen to the school building. Several parents expressed how the school is historic and they do not want to see a charter school in its place. While OCPS has released a plan for “potential uses” of the schools, the district told parents that no decision has been made.
