Decision nears on schools

Board voting on new attendance boundaries

Parents will make a final plea today to the Palm Beach County School Board to keep their children at crowded Calusa Elementary School in Boca Raton.

The board will vote on new attendance zones that would move 372 Calusa students to five other schools in Boca Raton. There are more than 1,200 students at Calusa, which was built for 836.

Some of the most vocal opponents of the plan live in Casa Bella at the western end of Linton Boulevard in Delray Beach. Their children would have to move to Whispering Pines Elementary, which they say is too far away.

“It will be a traffic nightmare for us to get there and get to our jobs,” parent Ron Kaniuk said. “There were a number of other plans that would have been better moves for everyone involved to reduce the student population.”

District documents show Calusa is 5.6 miles and 12 minutes by car from the Casa Bella area, while Whispering Pines is 7.4 miles and 14 minutes away.

The plan would fill seats in other Boca Raton elementary schools that have the space. Addison Mizner would become 87 percent full, up from the current 79 percent; Sunrise Park would hit 91 percent, up from 84 percent; and Whispering Pines would remain near capacity at 98 percent.

Calusa students are not the only ones set to be uprooted: Some Whispering Pines students would move to Sunrise Park, and some J.C. Mitchell pupils would head to Boca Raton and Addison Mizner elementaries.

The school district checked where current Calusa students live and found 97 problematic ad-