There’s still room at magnet schools

PBC district hopes to boost enrollment

There’s still room for new students at five Palm Beach County magnet schools benefiting from an $11.6 million federal grant that has paid for arts teachers, academic coaches and new iPads for students.

The five schools have received a C rating from the state for the past two years. The grant is designed to improve the quality of the schools by creating specialized programs to encourage families to choose a school closer to home instead of a distant magnet program.

At Carver Middle School in Delray Beach, which has an International Baccalaureate magnet, sixth-graders get iPads and an academic coach who is helping to integrate science and technology into the curriculum. The school also got a new science lab and a foreign language lab.

At Congress Middle in Boynton Beach, which has a science and technology magnet, sixth-graders also got iPads, as well as three fine arts teachers, a dance floor for dance classes, a piano lab, a science lab, and a coach and coordinator for its STEAM pro-

gram, which integrates the arts into the science and technology curriculum.

Grove Park Elementary in Palm Beach Gardens, H.L. Watkins Middle in Palm Beach Gardens and Palmetto Elementary in West Palm Beach were able to start new International Baccalaureate programs with their grant money, which expires in 2020.

Despite South Florida’s school crowding, most of these schools are severely under-enrolled. Carver, which has room for 1,534 students, had only 813 last year. Congress, with space for 1,432, had 894.

The school district hopes the addition of programs that have been popular at other schools will boost enrollment at the five schools in the coming years. The schools’ instructors are getting so much training that the campuses will have “some of the most highly qualified teachers in the district,” the school district reports.