Preserve eyed for school

Advocates say new homes in area create need

“We don’t need more cement. It’s just not where a school belongs.”

Pouring concrete and putting up buildings isn’t the expected approach to preserving land.

But that’s what backers of a new charter school plan to do by building on land supposedly preserved for farming west of Delray Beach.

The school could grow from about 24 acres set aside as an agricultural preserve on Happy Hollow Road, west of Lyons Road and a half-mile north of the Delray Marketplace shopping center.

Supporters say that an exception for schools allows building on the land and that the area needs more schools to accommodate families moving to new neighborhoods.

“The people are going to be asking for more schools,” said Lori Vinikoor, of the Alliance of Delray Residential Associations, which supports the school.

Farmland advocates, Roni Freedman, who keeps her horse at a stable near the proposed school though, object to sacrificing an agricultural preserve to accommodate more suburbia.

The County Commission on Thursday is scheduled to decide whether to allow the new charter school to proceed.

“We don’t need more cement,” said Roni Freedman, who keeps her horse at a stable near the proposed school. She also heads a group trying to protect farmland from development. “It’s just not where a school belongs.”

The school would be built in the county’s Agricultural Reserve, a 21,000-acre region that includes a mix of farming and development west of Delray Beach and Boynton Beach, squeezed between Florida’s Turnpike and the Loxa-