Which students will attend new Dr. García High School? The final vote is Wednesday
Update: The Palm Beach County School Board approved a final attendance map for Dr. Joaquín García High on March 29. Read about it here.
Palm Beach County School Board members will make their final decision Wednesday on which students will attend the county's newest schools, Dr. Joaquín García High School and West Boynton Middle School.
The board will vote on boundary maps developed by a volunteer committee, reviewed by Superintendent Mike Burke, and then tweaked by the school board in February.
The high school will pull from four different schools in the middle section of the county to fill the new school: Palm Beach Central, John I. Leonard, Santaluces and Park Vista. The middle school will pull from Woodlands and Christa McAuliffe.
Projections run by the district's demographics department show that 1,279 students will be slated to attend Dr. García High next school year. Located off Lyons Road in the western Lake Worth Beach area, the school will have space for 2,600 students. The school will have students of all grades, although juniors, seniors and the siblings of those students can choose to stay at their current schools.
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Parents will be able to speak on the boundary maps at Wednesday's meeting, but there don't appear to be changes proposed to the current maps.
The boundary-writing process has been grueling — advisory committee members met for more than 22 hours and heard hundreds of public comments from parents and other members of the public on Dr. García High's boundaries.
Tensions flared as the process laid bare disagreements between elected officials, volunteers, parents, students and community groups about which students and neighborhoods should be moved in order to fill the school and backfill the spaces left empty.
Among the concerned: Elected officials in Greenacres who said their students are being sent unfairly to five different high schools, families living south of Hypoluxo Road who pleaded with the school board to rezone their neighborhood to avoid a dangerous left hand turn and advocates who said that some communities were unfairly burdened while others mostly kept its boundaries in tact.
"This is a badly flawed map for the simple reason that it discriminates in favor of an affluent community to the specific expense and detriment of poor communities of color," said Mabel Melton, a member of the advisory boundary committee, of the preservation of school boundaries within the village of Wellington.
In all, the boundary map will touch nearly 22,000 students at seven schools, from Wellington to Palm Springs to Boca Raton.
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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: Who will attend Dr. Garcia High School? Final vote for attendance map
