Manatee County School District takes public pulse on big school decisions

PALMETTO -- Starting with "top-level concepts," Manatee County School District officials continued gathering community input Wednesday night to help shape decisions being made about handling long-term growth.

About 75 members of the community attended a meeting at Lincoln Middle School to give input through individual and group surveys about how the district should handle facilities.

"This is designed to be, and will be, a conducive and collaborative process," said Robert Johnson, district director of performance management. "The information you provide to us is valuable to us and being used to make decisions in the best interests of the students in Manatee County."

With approximately 1,000 more students each year, the district wants to make decisions by early next year on options to handle enrollment growth. The district has hired Hilliard, Ohio-based DeJong-Richter to help facilitate the process.

"If that trend continues, by the year 2020 we will be well over 50,000 students that we will serve in our school district," Superintendent Diana Greene said. "To do that, they must be able to have a facility to attend."

The district held an Educational Futures Conference

on Sept. 24 where a steering committee of about 30 community members was formed. The committee met a week ago to help shape the surveys given out Wednesday. Discussing results is the next step.

The steering committee and input from the community will help guide different scenarios DeJong-Richter will present to the Manatee County School Board. The scenarios will take in community input and hard data, including historical student growth and building capacity, said DeJong-Richter representative Scott Leopold.

Recommendations may include changing district attendance zones, building new schools, closing under-used schools or expanding existing schools. Ultimately, these decisions will rest with the school board.

Manatee County School Board members Bob Gause, Dave Miner, Charlie Kennedy and John Colon attended Wednesday and spoke with community members but did not fill out surveys or participate in the discussion. A number of high-level district officials were there as well.

The night wasn't about specifics or data, Leopold said. It was about perception.

"This is not a time to think about specifics. We're talking about global perceptions," he said.

Surveys will be available on the school district website, manateeschools.net.

The next community dialogue meeting will be held Dec. 16 at Bayshore High School.

Organizers said they will present some specific scenarios to the public before bringing them to the school board.

Meghin Delaney, education reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7081. Follow her on twitter @MeghinDelaney.

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 12:03 AM with the headline "Manatee County School District takes public pulse on big school decisions ."