INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Whether Osceola Magnet Elementary School will eventually be moved out to Pointe West continues to be a question mark for the Indian River County School Board as negotiations and discussions continue with Pointe West’s developers.
The School District and Pointe West officials have been discussing building a school within the development for more than 11 years. The original intent had been for a traditional school to open there, drawing the students who live within the development.
As the years have progressed, however, the School District has no need for a new traditional elementary school, but instead a new campus for the existing Osceola Magnet Elementary School, currently located on 20th Street in Vero Beach.
As a magnet school, there is no zone from which to pull students. Instead, enrollment is open to all students in the county and seats are filled based on a lottery system.
First and second preferences are given to minority students and siblings of current enrollees.
Chuck Mechling, president of Pointe West, wants a third preference added – Pointe West residents.
Mechling told the School Board Tuesday that Pointe West had been designed to be an interactive community, with homes, retail and medical uses, as well as a school. He said that it had been the community’s understanding that a school built in the community would serve the community’s children.
School District staff have attempted a compromise with Pointe West, offering up to 25 percent of the kindergarten seats for Pointe West students. Over time, the school’s population could have 25 percent of its students from Pointe West.
School Board member Karen Disney-Brombach opposed the recommendation of keeping seats open specifically for a community.
“I’m not sure that’s the direction this board should be going in,” she said, raising concerns about equal access to the magnet school for all students. “We really have to examine ourselves.”
Disney-Brombach said that the Pointe West location had seemed ideal at the beginning – for a traditional school, but now that the district is proposing relocating a magnet, the site might not work.
Fellow School Board members voiced concerns about losing the site and the prospect of another school – private or charter – moving in, attracting students who would have otherwise attended a traditional or magnet school.
“We keep lamenting we are losing students to the charters,” member Carol Johnson said, adding that the dollars attached to those students go to the charter schools, not the traditional schools.
She said that working out an agreement with Pointe West for Osceola Magnet might be a way to recapture students and the assigned dollars.
The School Board agreed that no matter the outcome of the determination to set aside seats for Pointe West residents, current non-Pointe West students would not be asked to transfer to another school when a new students moves into Pointe West.
Board Chair Matt McCain floated the idea of relocating a traditional elementary school to the Pointe West site and moving Osceola Magnet to that school’s former site and rezoning for the traditional school at Pointe West.
School Board members did not support the suggestion.
Member Claudia Jimenez said doing so would be “a tremendous disruption” to the students and community.
She said that setting aside seats for Pointe West was reasonable.
“We need to be willing to listen and compromise,” Jimenez said.
Along with dealing with student access to the school, the board discussed a need for more water retention.
Instead of the originally anticipated 150,000 square feet of retention the school would need, the district has discovered it needs 300,000 square feet.
Pointe West has committed 150,000 square feet and is seeking $2 per square foot of additional retention.
The School Board agreed to have Schools Superintendent Dr. Fran Adams and her team negotiate a price for the additional retention.
Facilities Coordinator Susan Olson told the board that the original 150,000-square-foot retention need was based on a smaller footprint school the district was accustomed to building in the early 2000s. The district now builds larger elementary schools for more students, necessitating a larger footprint and more retention.
Mechling said after the meeting that he wants to continue working with the School District to reach a resolution that allows Pointe West students to go to the school. He said parents would be frustrated if they had to send their children to another school, passing Osceola Magnet on the way.
If an agreement cannot be reached, Mechling said he would not rule out the idea of inviting a charter school to build at Pointe West. He pointed to the community’s close proximity to Indian River Charter High and the ties Pointe West already has to that school.
