Palm Beach County's first new high school in 17 years opens next fall. What will it be named?

Palm Beach County's newest high school won't be named after actor Brad Pitt or Asgard, a mythical Nordic city that has risen to fame with an assist from The Avengers. 

A committee charged with naming the high school, on Lyons Road in the western Lake Worth area, left those on the cutting room floor.

They decided Monday evening on three possible names, which will be sent to the school board for a final vote. The date for that vote has not yet been set.

The final three possible names are:

• Park Ridge High School

• Western Wave High School

• Dr. Joaquin Garcia High School

The county's 24th public high school will have space for 2,600 students.

School board members and parents hope it will relieve crowding at schools across the midsection of the county.

The project, referred to by the district as "OOO" until it is named, is the first new high school to be built since 2005, when Seminole Ridge High was completed near Westlake.

Hispanic doctor, community leader among three possible names for new school

The high school's principal, two prospective students, community members, a representative from the Palm Beach County Historical Society and Instructional Superintendent Karen Whetsell sorted through names in the auditorium at nearby John I. Leonard High School on Monday night.

They discarded names that included "Lake Worth" to adhere to a district policy that prohibits new schools from sharing names with existing schools.

Also left on the cutting room floor was Abraham Lincoln High School, Ruth Bader Ginsburg High School and Jewell High School, which hearkened back to the post office approved in 1889 for the Lake Worth Beach area, but that Whetsell said it may be too similar to the electronic cigarette company Juul.

Tessa Shore, a student at Woodlands Middle who is on the committee, said she liked the name Western Wave because it evokes a beachy and natural vibe. Others said the name honors the "wave" of people who have moved to the western Lake Worth area in recent years.

But when the committee members voted on their favorite names, one name pulled far ahead with nearly double the number of votes: Dr. Joaquin Garcia High School.

Garcia was a Cuban-born doctor and businessman who was a founding member of the Hispanic Education Coalition of Palm Beach County and co-founder of the El Cid Animal Clinic in West Palm Beach.

He was also involved in the Homeless Coalition of Palm Beach County, the Compass Community Center and the International AIDS Education Foundation. Garcia was a strong supporter of dual-language programs in the school district.

In a news release, district leaders said Garcia frequently said he did not have any natural children, but that he considered the nearly 200,000 students in the Palm Beach County School District to be "his children and his responsibility."

He died in November 2021 and was honored with a proclamation by the school board one month later.

Which students will attend the new Lake Worth area high school?

Next in the school's development process is drawing boundaries that will outline which students will attend the new school, situated between Palm Beach Central and Park Vista high schools and just west of Florida's Turnpike.

Nine high schools currently need relief from crowding, as they reported enrollment numbers that exceed their building capacity this year: Dreyfoos School of the Arts and Boca Raton, Forest Hill, John I. Leonard, Olympic Heights, Palm Beach Central, Park Vista, Santaluces and Spanish River high schools.

While geography makes it nearly impossible for the new high school to address crowding on all of those campuses, helping nearby high schools will require tricky boundary rewriting.

The school will be filled from surrounding neighborhoods, and the vacancies created in other high schools will then be filled by moving those boundaries and potentially shifting students.

It has yet to be seen what the new school will be able to do for Forest Hill High, which is likely too far east for direct relief but is the district's most crowded high school. Forest Hill packs 2,412 students on a campus built for 1,837 — leaving the school at 131% capacity.

District officials will determine boundaries for the new school through a series of public meetings of the boundary committee. Last year, the public meetings began in December for Blue Lake Elementary School in Boca Raton, which opened in August.

The dates for those meetings for "OOO High School" are not yet set, but interested parents can check the district's student enrollment and demographics page online for updates. 

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: What are new names for Lake Worth area high school opening fall 2023