Englewood Elementary Principal Hope Tepper speaks with parents during a working group meeting Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024, inside the media center at Spring Park Elementary. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on January 17, 2024 at 5:51 pm
Lynda Corley’s voice cracked at times Tuesday night.
The longtime volunteer was passionate that future students at Englewood and Spring Park elementary schools should have access to the opportunities she witnessed and fostered during her three decades assisting the community schools.
Corley was among the people who participated in a working group that will provide insight to Duval County Public Schools about the future of three elementary schools in and around the Spring Glen community.
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Despite a handful of meetings over the last two months, some parents and stakeholders remain concerned about the size of the rebuilt Englewood and Spring Park elementary schools as well as who will attend.
Englewood Elementary will close after this academic year to be rebuilt. The $41.5 million project is expected to finish in August 2025.
That project will send current students six miles away to Windy Hills Elementary for the 2024-25 academic year. When the new Englewood reopens, it will be large enough to accomodate Love Grove students.
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The district has sought a solution about the Englewood, Spring Park and Love Grove for more than 15 years. A 2007 long-range facilities plan called for Love Grove to be renovated, while Spring Park was consolidated with Englewood.
The final plan will rebuild both Englewood as well as Spring Park and close Love Grove. It is funded through the half-penny sales tax that Duval County voters approved in 2020 to fund infrastructure projects within the district.
Assistant Superintendent of Operations Erika Harding said the conversation has been robust.
“The goal and the aim is to make sure we are transparent with our parents about the process and they know about the intended schools, the new school and they feel they are part of the decision-making,” Harding told Jacksonville Today last week. “We really value their input in those meetings.”
The district staff will review the recommendations and call a community meeting for the three schools.
The working group submitted two recommendations to the district:
- Use the Commodore Point Expressway as a boundary for the new Englewood Elementary because it ensures equitable enrollment across Englewood and Spring Park elementary.
- Provide bus transportation for all zoned students northeast of the Commodore Point expressway because of a dearth of sidewalks.
Harding cited the communication between parents and community advocates on the Westside as an example of what is possible through working groups. When Chaffee Trail Middle School opens later this year, it will feature school boundaries that were suggested by a working group and approved by the School Board.
“The communication among the members was thorough,” said Emily Gideon, a working group member who has lived in Spring Park for 19 years. “We felt our voices were heard as far as boundaries. There were concerns that members had that we thought would be addressed by this committee and they were not.”
Corley’s biggest concern was schools were built to current capacities and not incorporating potential growth in the Englewood and Spring Park neighborhoods.
Despite groundbreaking on the new Englewood slated for late spring, working group members and parents are still flummoxed at the reverberations. Tuesday’s meeting inside the media center at Spring Park Elementary was the fourth time the group of parents, faculty, students, business owners and community members had met.
During a community conversation Jan. 10, Schools Superintendent Dana Kriznar told WJCT News 89.9 that the district had communicated its plans to parents and encouraged them to attend the trio of meetings that were held in November and December.
“I know we’ve had interpreters come to meetings,” Kriznar said at the time. “We’ve had board members come to community meetings. We’ve had them at different schools, so that it was convenient. We’ve sent home newsletters. It’s on the website.”
Nevertheless, questions and confusion remain.
Marie Schuller said she has attended two of the community meetings. She has lived in Jacksonville for 55 years and would have preferred the district find a way to repurpose buildings instead of tear down old schools.
Love Grove has served students in the Spring Glen neighborhood for decades. In 2022, the school sustained a rodent infestation. Schuller said her takeaway from the meetings she attended was the community was not completely abreast of the changes on the horizon.
“At least the parents who have students at the school should have got some kind of notification in their kids’ books,” Schuller said. “That may have been done. From what I can tell, (neighbors don’t know).”
Population in the 32207 ZIP code where the schools are situated grew 8.7% to 36,207 in the 2020 census, far less than some other areas within the district. But, considering the growth in the community and the scores of parents who identified transportation as the top issue facing the district during last fall’s suspended superintendent search, Schuller said it would have behooved the district to repurpose schools instead of tear them down.
Duval’s master facilities plan calls for 10 schools to be removed and another five to be held as swing spaces.
Gabriella Gonzalez is an Englewood Elementary parent who believes the conversation is akin to dividing two families and does not make complete sense to her.
“They didn’t focus on how to explain to some parents,” Gonzalez said through an interpreter. “They didn’t fully ask the Hispanic parents what they think.”
Gonzalez was among the nearly two dozen people — either in the working group or parents — who discussed the future for the Englewood and Spring Park schools. No detail was too small, including the potential for Englewood to change its mascot from lambs to something less feeble.
Harding noted there were interpreters at a previous workgroup meetings. Though operations does not lead the working group meetings or the community meetings, Harding said transparency about the district’s work on the half-penny projects is paramount.
That information, district officials say, is available on its website.
“We want to make sure that we realize those operational savings by right-sizing the district so that we can dedicate those resources back into the classroom, back into our educational environment and have those positive impacts on our students,” Harding said.
Lead image: Englewood Elementary Principal Hope Teper speaks with parents during a working group meeting Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024, inside the media center at Spring Park Elementary. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
