Parents protest MetroWest school
School District cites shortage of land
Facing a shortage of suitable land, the Orange County school district has come up with an unusual way to relieve crowding at its largest elementary — build a second school on the same site.
With nearly 1,600 students, MetroWest Elementary is one of Florida’s biggest elementary schools. The school is 300 students over capacity and uses 15 portables for classrooms.
Parents and school board members say they’re not sure putting two elementary schools on the same campus is a good idea.
“We don’t care for this plan,” said Melissa Miller, the president of the school’s PTA. “What we requested from [the district] is they look for a new school in another location in MetroWest.”
Miller said parents’ concerns range from traffic backups to the loss of space for PE and recess on the 25-acre site when the new school opens in 2017.
But the district wasn’t able to find another suitable location near the current school site, said spokeswoman Lauren Roth. The yet-to-benamed school will include parts of the existing facility
and the current school will incorporate some new buildings.
Each school will be designed to serve 837 students. They’ll have two playgrounds apiece and playfields of at least 45,000 square feet, the minimum required for new Orange elementary schools.
The two schools also will have their own parking lot, which will increase the total number of spaces, and drop-off loops, allowing more cars to queue. The district is considering staggering start times to relieve traffic congestion.
“The plan is to get relief for students who currently attend MetroWest Elementary as quickly as possible,” Roth said.
Building two schools next door to each other is not new in Orange. Castle Creek Elementary is next to Camelot Elementary in the Avalon Park area. Before Castle Creek opened in 2006, Camelot was among the district’s most crowded schools.
Orange has at least six other sites with two adjacent schools, but those pairings consist of schools that serve different grade levels.
Orange is in the midst of
a school-building boom, especially on the east and west ends of the county. The district opened two new elementary schools last August and expects to add 13 more over the next five years. The district gained 5,000 students this fall.
Zoning for the two schools hasn’t been set, but the district has presented two options that would split most MetroWest students between the current and new schools. A few current MetroWest students will attend Windy Ridge K-8.
Board member Pam Gould, whose district includes MetroWest, acknowledged the plan is not ideal. But she said establishing a second school, rather than expanding the current one, will allow each to have more resources, like its own principal and guidance counselors.
“We can look [for alternatives] but I do not want to stop the process and keep resources away from these kids one more day,” Gould said.
Chairman Bill Sublette said he understands there’s not much available land in the area, but he’d rather slow the building process.
“My gut is screaming out it is a mistake to build an elementary school next to another elementary,” Sublette
said.
Board member Kat Gordon had a different perspective, saying the plan was “brilliant” and could help eliminate battles over rezoning.
“I just thought it was an ingenious idea,” Gordon said. “You’re not uprooting the masses — the masses are right there.”
But some MetroWest parents are not happy.
Kyle Deaton, a father of three, said he drove around the area on his own and suggested alternative sites for the new school.
Deaton said he wishes the district had pulled parents into the planning process sooner. “This is kind of being rammed down our throats,” he said.
Miller said her son won’t be affected because he’s a fifth-grader, but he’s had a good experience at MetroWest, even with the school’s size. The school has performed well, earning mostly A grades from the state.
“I can’t say that we’re too big because it just gives us an opportunity to know more people,” she said. “Our community is big — we all see each other at the grocery store or baseball fields — it gives us opportunities to be more sociable.”