Boca Raton schools to move to Don Estridge Middle during renovations
Don Estridge High Tech Middle School, a popular magnet school in Boca Raton, will lose its soccer and track fields for the next few years as more than 1,000 students move into 70 portables on the middle school’s campus.
Some Don Estridge parents and staff members are furious, concerned about how the Palm Beach County School District will find space for the schools’ track and soccer teams and questioning how the elementary school students and their families will use the middle school’s parking lots, bus loop and other facilities.
“It seems like boom, a brick fell on us,” said Don Estridge parent Scott Adams, whose daughter is a seventh grader. “All our sports are going to be lost. You’re putting two schools in one.”
Plans call for about 1,000 students from Verde Elementary in Boca Raton to move to Don Estridge next year as their campus at 6590 Verde Trail is demolished and rebuilt on the same site, School Board member Frank Barbieri Jr. said.
The district plans a $31.7 million renovation of the Verde campus, which will add a middle school to relieve crowding at Omni Middle in Boca Raton. The school is scheduled to be rebuilt in one year, with students returning to their home campus in August 2023.
But about 800 students from Addison Mizner Elementary school would then replace them on the Don Estridge fields. Addison Mizner students would return to their campus, which will be rebuilt as a K-8 for $20 million, in August 2021.
Boca Raton’s schools are filled to capacity, and the Palm Beach County School District needed temporary space to house the students as their schools are rebuilt, Barbieri said.
“We’re very crowded down here with the changing demographics,” Barbieri said. He said he hopes Don Estridge students will get their fields back by 2021, although current students will be gone from the campus by then. A plan has not yet been announced on how the fields would be restored.
The demolitions, renovations and expansions will be paid for with a penny sales tax approved by voters in 2016.
The plans accommodate a transforming city, where residents who have owned their homes for decades are selling to young families demanding highly rated schools in
good condition that are not crowded.
The school district also wants to build a new elementary school next to Don Estridge and has set aside $18.6 million for its construction. Plans call for the school to have room for 970 students and to open in 2020. But Barbieri said the district is waiting for approval from the state.
Valeri Bishop, PTSA president at Don Estridge, said Verde students will eat lunch in their portables, so they will not be using the school’s cafeteria. But parents are wondering about parking and traffic flow on already-congested Spanish River Boulevard, the main entrance to Don Estridge.
Bruce Rich, a Don Estridge track coach and civics teacher, said the track and soccer teams have not yet been offered alternative practice sites.
“I don’t think the school district has thought about what the impact will be,” Rich said. “To lose our track and say you can run it at another school, that’s not acceptable to me.”