New programs to greet record 193,000 students when classes begin
Palm Beach County’s public schools are set to open with a record number of students and new programs at several campuses, Schools Superintendent Robert Avossa said Friday.
But the county’s schools are struggling to hire enough new teachers to fill the classrooms, a perennial problem Get more news every day about Palm Beach County schools at the Extra Credit blog. time finding teachers and so we’ve started working on this much earlier than we ever have in the past,” Avossa said at a news conference previewing the new school year, which starts Aug. 14.
The school district has hired more than 700 new teachers to start this school year but administrators say they are still about 150 short, particularly in schools and subjects that are difficult to fill. Overall about 12,000 teachers work in the county’s schools.
As administrators work to recruit more teachers, they are launching new programs at several schools, including remaking some schools entirely.
Hidden Oaks Elementary west of Boynton Beach will take its first step toward becoming a K-8 school by
adding sixth-grade classes. Seventh and eighth grades will follow.
In upcoming years, the school district expects to expand the K-8 model to at least two other schools. Administrators say parents like the intimate feel, smaller grade levels and continuity of K-8 schools and have been gravitating to charter schools that offer that model.
“We’re really working hard on making big feel small,” Avossa said.
New programs are opening up at several schools in the county, including a new ROTC program at Royal Palm Beach High School.
Also new this year are pre-International Baccaleurate programs at three new schools: Grove Park Elementary in Palm Beach Gardens, H.L. Watkins Middle in Palm Beach Gardens and Palmetto Elementary in West Palm Beach.
The county’s elementary schools are also expanding the county’s “accelerated math program” or AMP, in which students can take three years of math in two years.
This past year 44 schools offered the program, and this year nearly all of the county’s public elementaries are expected to have the program, although a precise number was unavailable Friday.
“This is allowing kids on a competency-based level to move more quickly through the curriculum,” Avossa said.
All told, the school district expects to have 193,000 students from kindergarten to 12th grade, including the roughly 20,000 enrolled in charter schools. That’s up from about 190,000 at the start of the previous school year.
Two years after a major school bus crisis across the county, the school district says it expects continued improvement in getting students to and from school on time, thanks to a growing fleet of new buses and a surplus of bus drivers.
Parents this year will also have a new way to stay connected with their child’s school: a free cellphone application that will allow parents to navigate school websites and track information about their students. Administrators said they expect the application to be available for download by the end of next week.
For information on preparing for the start of school, parents can visit PalmBeachSchools.org/backtoschool.