District eyes shifting Forest Hill students to relieve crowding

School is at 140% of capacity; Palm Beach Lakes possible.

T h e s c h o o l d i s t r i c t ’ s boundary advisory committee will turn its attention this week to trimming the rolls at the most crowded public high school in the county: Forest Hill.

The school, tucked east of Interstate 95 on the south side of Forest Hill Boulevard, has 2,472 students crammed onto a campus built for 1,837. That puts the school at 140 percent of its capacity.

Built in 1958 and largely replaced in 2004, it has one of the smallest footprints for a high school. With limited classroom space and so many students, the school has 24 teachers with no room to call their own. Instead they float into rooms emptied when another teacher goes on break.

The first relief plan that the committee will review chips away at the crowding by moving 182 students living north of Palm Beach L akes Boulevard to Palm Beach Lakes High, a school that is, on average, nearly 3 miles closer to their homes.

T h e n e i g h b o r h o o d s involved are those in the far northern reaches of Forest Hill’s boundaries and were likely established years ago when the boundaries were expanded to fill once-emptying seats.

The committee meets at 6:30 p.m. today at district headquarters at 3300 Forest Hill Blvd. Public comment is limited to 10 minutes total for those wanting to talk about Forest Hill at this meeting.

Once the committee picks a boundary option, it will then schedule a meeting with unlimited time for parents and community members to weigh in.

In recent years, administrators have shined up Forest Hill’s reputation by beefing up its academics and offerings, including the addition of an International Baccalaureate program among seven choice offerings. With the changes, the school’s popularity among parents has grown.

“There’s no new homes in the Forest Hill boundary, just new families repopulating there. Also, that school has become a popular school. We established seven choice programs there to attract students,” the district’s boundary expert, Jason Link, said recently.

Fe we r f a mi l i e s i n t h e school’s zone are sending their children to magnets or private schools outside the boundaries, he said.

Palm Beach Lakes High, meanwhile, has about 2,400 students or about 87 percent of its capacity.

Both schools have enough students living in poverty to earn Title 1 designation. Forest Hill is a C school with about 88 percent minority students. Palm Beach Lakes is a more segregated school with 95 percent minority students. The school’s grade from the state fell last year from a C to a D.

The only other nearby school that could serve as a relief valve for Forest Hill is John I. Leonard High, but it, too, is filled beyond its capacit y, and, with 3,645 students is the largest school in the district.

Now that voters approved the penny increase in the sales tax, the district can move f o r wa r d i n b u i l d - ing a relief high school in the region. But that school would be built at Lake Worth and Lyons roads and would require a series of boundary changes before it could alleviate crowding at Forest Hill High. And it would be years down the road — sometime between 2022 and 2027, according to the district’s capital budget.