PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — This is a big week for thousands of Palm Beach County high school parents and students who are anxiously waiting to find out where they'll go to school next year.
The new Dr. Joaquín García High School will open in August in western Lake Worth. On Wednesday, the Palm Beach County School Board will discuss the new proposed student boundaries for the first time.
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"We keep hearing over and over that children are resilient. That’s so unfair to put on them when there is a solution that will keep them with their peers," said parent Elana Kerr.
Kerr lives in the Isola Bella community on Hypoluxo Road. She and her neighbors are disappointed that Superintendent Mike Burke's boundary map moves her community from Park Vista Community High School to the new Dr. Joaquín García High School, disrupting the feeder pattern for her elementary school kids.
"At this time, [Manatee Elementary School] feeds 100% into [Christa McAuliffe Middle School]. Christa feeds 100% into Park Vista, except for our community, which would go to García," Kerr said. "It looks like a state-of-the-art new high school. Our concern is how this will effect our children's social emotional learning. We just think it will be really detrimental to the kids in our community to be pulled away from everything they’ve known, especially coming out of COVID years."
View Superintendent Burke's recommended map below:
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Drawing the new school zones has been a contentious process that will shuffle thousands of students around eight high schools from Boca Raton to West Palm Beach.
Another community hoping for change this week is the city of Greenacres, which passed a resolution last month asking the Palm Beach County School Board to consider how close students live to the school they are zoned for.
"The mayor and council do feel that focus on student to school proximity wasn’t something that was given the consideration it should have been given," said Greenacres city manager Andrea McCue.
Greenacres leaders also point out the city's students will now be split among five area high schools.
"We think García High School is going to be a great high school," McCue said. "And we know that while we are only six square miles, and currently in four schools in six square miles, adding a fifth school is a lot of schools for the size of our community."
Isola Bella neighbors worry, too, about traffic heading west to the new school.
"We have a really contentious left turn coming out of our neighborhood," Kerr said. "You have to contend with the neighborhood across the street, traffic coming in four different directions. It is a difficult left turn for an experienced driver. I would never want to put new drivers in that scenario."
Kerr and her community hope the school board will hear their concerns.
Along with the proposed boundary map, Superintendent Burke is also recommending that students who will be juniors next year be allowed to stay at their current school if they wish, along with rising seniors and their siblings.
That's something that a lot of parents and students have been pushing for.
The Palm Beach County School Board will meet Wednesday afternoon to discuss the proposed boundaries and then vote later that evening.
