Here's who Palm Beach County school superintendent thinks should go to new Dr. García High

Update: The Palm Beach County School Board approved a final attendance map for Dr. Joaquín García High on March 29. Read about it here.

Students who attend eight different high schools in the county's midsection are one step closer to knowing whether they'll be able to stay at their schools or are moving to a new high school next year.

Palm Beach County Schools Superintendent Mike Burke has released his recommended boundary map for the county's newest high school, Dr. Joaquín García High, which will be located off Lyons Road in the western Lake Worth area.

His recommended map suggests leaving Lake Worth High School's boundaries intact, moving a neighborhood in Wellington from Wellington High to Palm Beach Central and keeping one neighborhood near the airport from moving to John I. Leonard from Forest Hill High — the most crowded high school in the district.

Those changes are layered on top of recommendations from the volunteer boundary advisory committee, which devoted more than 20 hours to meetings and reviewed hundreds of public comments in the boundary-writing process.

Burke has also appeared to agree with parents who have criticized the district for not starting early enough to establish boundaries for a school with space for up to 2,600 students in the middle of a fast-growing part of the county. He said that parents who say the district should have started earlier have "valid" points.

His recommendation now goes to the school board for consideration at its Wednesday workshop and meeting.

In addition to a map with suggested boundaries, Burke has recommended allowing both juniors and seniors to choose to stay at their current high school through graduation, an ask echoed by dozens of parents of upperclassmen-to-be.

His recommendations also include allowing the siblings of juniors and seniors to stay put, providing that parents take responsibility for getting any student to and from school who chooses to stay.

"Unfortunately there’s no recommendation that was going to make everyone happy," Burke said. "I expect a lot of juniors and seniors to stay and finish out their career. I do recognize that that junior year is a critical year as students prepare for their postgrad year. They’re entrenched in their school community."

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Parents in Lake Worth area, Greenacres feel left out by Burke's recommendations

Burke's changes to the map don't satisfy everyone.

They don't address concerns from parents who live in one part of the western Lake Worth area whose students will have to take a dangerous left turn at an intersection that doesn't have a signal to get to Dr. García High instead of Park Vista, which is east of the Isola Bella neighborhood.

"The new map continues to be disappointing," said William Vogt, an Isola Bella resident with three elementary-age children. "This is a hazard. We’re now putting our young kids, our new drivers and our kids on buses into the equation with this new assignment."

The gated community homeowners association has been denied a traffic signal by Florida's Department of Transportation because of the intersection's proximity to Florida's Turnpike.

"We have the well-being of children in mind with our request, not the inconvenience of a long drive," Vogt said, pointing to parents in other neighborhoods who have successfully lobbied to move their students from Boynton Beach High to Park Vista, citing long travel times to the school.

Although the traffic issues were included in the advisory committee's suggestions to Burke, his recommendations do not appear to address safety concerns for the neighborhood.

Previously: 'Can't make everybody happy': 3 things to know about boundaries for Dr. García High

The proposed map also failed to address concerns from the city of Greenacres that its high school students were being divided among five different schools, while other municipalities such as Wellington were allowed to keep all the village's students in schools with Wellington addresses.

"If it’s fair and equitable, I don’t have a problem sending our kids to another school," Greenacres Mayor Joel Flores said. "But if you're busing our students a further distance to accommodate students in a different community, that's not sharing the burden equally."

The city in January passed a resolution pushing for the advisory committee to recommend a map that reduced the number of ways the city's neighborhoods were divided. Neither the advisory committee nor Burke's recommendations change the number of schools Greenacres students will attend.

Do parents know enough about Dr. García High School?

While many parents of rising juniors are relieved by Burke's recommendation to allow juniors to stay where they are next year, some are criticizing the district's communication about the new school and which programs and sports it will offer.

It's a concern that Dr. García Principal Oscar Otero saw coming in November.

"The biggest challenge is also the biggest opportunity: bringing students from other high schools who are already established in a school culture and creating a new school community can be difficult," he said at the time. "We know it’s a lot of work, but that end result is that fulfilling sense of something special and new."

But parents whose children will be sent to the new school don't feel like they know enough about it.

"The district hasn’t been good about selling Dr. García High. What does day one look like? What does six months look like?" said Carrie Baum, the parent of an 8th grader at Woodlands Middle School. She's told her daughter she has an 80% chance of being rezoned to Dr. García High.

"It wouldn’t be as scary going to Garcia if they said, 'Day one you’ll have a football team, cheerleading, AP classes, a PTO, homecoming, pep rallies,' " Baum said. "If they were more open about that along with this process, there would be more excitement about Garcia than there would be trepidation about going there."

Burke said he expects to have more announcements in the coming weeks about programs at Dr. García High.

"Mr. Otero is actively working to open this school and recruit his faculty, coaches, band and a choral director, and they will be in place," he said. "We’ll have the new facility. The school will have a nice budget, new band uniforms and new instruments. It’s going to be a comprehensive high school with all those programs available."

Asked about a football team, Burke said he wasn't sure whether the school will have a JV-only program or a varsity program.

Does the school district need to write high school boundaries earlier?

Meanwhile, parents and even advisory committee members wonder whether the boundary writing should have started earlier for a high school that will affect more than 1,500 students across the district. The district initiated the public process in December at the same time it started considering boundaries for West Boynton Middle School.

"I would hope that this whole entire process is reexamined for the next new high school that’s going to come out," said parent Suzanne Skidmore, who lives near Florida’s Turnpike south of Hypoluxo Road. "Boundaries for high school are way different than elementary and middle. It should be done a year early. There’s so much more involved."

Skidmore said she plans to keep her daughter at Park Vista High for her junior year next year, even if she's zoned to attend Dr. García High, by taking advantage of the proposed program that allows juniors to stay. She said it's unreasonable for students to not yet know where they'll be going to school next semester.

"There’s so much on the line," she said.

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Asked about whether he'll suggest the district start boundary writing earlier for the next high school, to open in the western communities in 2028, Burke said the Dr. García boundary process was a huge learning opportunity.

"That may be a valid point that we could have started a little earlier," he said. "I think the next one should be a little easier. There should be fewer schools involved. Here we have overcrowding all the way from the eastern part of the county domino-ing to the west."

Katherine Kokal is a journalist covering education at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at kkokal@pbpost.com. Help support our work, subscribe today!

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County superintendent's Dr. García High attendance map