WAKULLA COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) — The Wakulla County School Board unanimously voted to rezone parts of the county to reduce overcrowding at Crawfordville Elementary School. The change will take effect next school year and require some current students to attend Medart Elementary instead.
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Starting next school year, families with addresses east of Crawfordville Highway and south of Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Road will have to attend Medart Elementary. The district says this will help alleviate overcrowding at Crawfordville Elementary.
"When you look at school zones, right, you make them to be as concentric around a school as you can. But there's going to be a buffer, right? There's going to be that area where they butt up against each other, and so as density increases, the size of a zone is going to decrease," said Richard Myhre, the superintendent of Wakulla County Schools.
After the superintendent announced possible solutions to the overcrowding at Crawfordville Elementary, I spoke with multiple parents who told me they were worried about how the rezoning would affect their kids. That includes concerns about students with special needs, new learning environments, added drive times and miles, and the need for new after-school care.
Chadwick Cespedes is one of the many parents in his neighborhood affected by this rezoning. He says his kids would have a rough time adjusting to a new place at their age.
"The oldest one. He's in fourth grade, so he's going to be going in fifth grade. He's spent the last year with his friends and stuff there, and his routine gets switched up. He's going to be completely different form for that last year. It's going to be pointless to do that. My 7-year-old, who's in second grade, she's, like, super social and stuff. So when she wakes up in the morning and gets ready for school and goes to school and all that stuff, she has the teachers she sees all the time, our previous teachers and everything. If everything changes, they're both gonna have a really rough start, rough time adjusting," Cespedes said.
He also cited that for his oldest he would have to re-adjust to a new school this year just to do it all over again when going to the middle school the year after.
Olivia Moore, another affected parent, has already taken action regarding the change by filling out out-of-zone requests to stay at Crawfordville Elementary.
"I've already filled out the application. But as far as we know, it's up to the district office whether he gets to stay at the school or not after he's been there for two years," Moore said.
Moore suggested the whole district should have been rezoned to keep parents from driving long distances to their child's school. Superintendent Myhre explained why the district did not need to do that.
"So there's not a need to rezone the entire county when you're really trying to just reduce in one zone and shift to another. So you're not going to rezone the whole county when the problem doesn't exist everywhere. Nor, like I said in the initial recommendations, that the other two schools are pretty much at capacity also," Myhre said.
Despite previous concerns from parents, no one spoke against the school board's vote during Tuesday's meeting.
This vote comes after the January 20 town hall meeting where neighbors shared their initial concerns over the school's solution to the overcrowding.
This change will not affect this school year. If any student living at the affected addresses would like to remain at Crawfordville Elementary, they'll have to fill out a district out-of-zone request form by March 14 in the parent portal.
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