As Manatee school district prepares to shut down Orange Ridge, Bullock families prepare for move to Rogers Garden

MANATEE -- Andoni Rezola is visually impaired, hearing impaired, physically impaired and developmentally delayed. He's on the autism spectrum and nonverbal. His blood has been sent overseas to try to find a diagnosis. Doctors haven't up with anything concrete.

Even so, he's a happy kid.

"He emits love in a way, he draws people in, even though he can't show you his love," father Inaki Rezola said on Friday, just outside Andoni's classroom, where he gets special attention and dedicated service to help him each day. "He's just as special as our other children."

Eight-year-old Andoni is a second-grade student -- one of about 60 such students -- who receives special care and education in the Bullock program, housed at Orange Ridge-Bullock Elementary School.

As the district struggles to balance enrollment in the district, the board will take action April 12 that could potentially shut down Orange Ridge and send the majority of its students to surrounding schools, with most heading to Rogers Garden Elementary School.

But Andoni and his peers won't be subject to that redistricting, under the district's plan. Because of the special needs

those Bullock students face, the district is proposing to move the entire program to space inside Rogers Garden, to try to minimize disruption.

Superintendent Diana Greene is proposing Rogers Garden undergo a name change to reflect Bullock and the services it provides to some of the neediest students.

'Higher level of care'

Bullock opened as its own K-12 school in 1984 to serve students with higher needs. Bullock and Orange Ridge merged in the 1990s, with new construction that connected the two campuses. Bullock stayed as a center for the district's most medically fragile and physically impaired students.

The students in the program come from all over the county. The Rezola family lives in Parrish, but because of Andoni's needs and his inability to function in a traditional classroom, he attends Bullock.

"My son isn't going to benefit right now from someone doing circle time," Inaki said. "You need that higher level of care."

Many of the Bullock students have one-on-one aides because of their needs. In Andoni's class, there are seven students, with four adults in the room. The rest of the classrooms have similar arrangements.

"We place these teachers strategically in these rooms," Principal Maribeth Mason said.

Inside the classrooms, teachers and aides work one-on-one with students, and the whiteboards in the rooms dictate specific therapy or feeding sessions. Some of the medically impaired students feed through tubes, and nurses come in specifically for them. The classrooms have bathrooms, changing tables and at least one has a full shower.

One of the classrooms for the physically impaired students has a swing secured up through the ceiling. It's a particular favorite of one student, Lizzie.

The inside of the classroom doors have special rubber doorknobs over the traditional ones, in an attempt to slow down children, especially those on the autism spectrum, who may try to run out of their class and through the common areas. The main sliding glass doors only open to let people out when a button on a wall nearby the door is hit, for similar reasons.

When it opened, the Bullock school was designed as its own "little city" on the inside, and a big common area is still lined with indoor street lights. For the Bullock students, the common area is a necessity.

Extra equipment, including individual gait trainers -- which look like walkers -- line the walls. The trainers are specifically fitted to each student, so there are a lot of them. Nap pads are stored outside and brought into the classrooms each day. Instead of bringing the children through the school for specials like music, art and physical education, the special area teachers come to the common room and teach their lessons there. A special playground outside is outfitted specifically for the Bullock students, with modified swings.

A physical therapy/occupational therapy room is located in Bullock, and while it's used by Orange Ridge students as well, the bulk of the work is done with the Bullock children.

"For the Bullock kids, it's all about increasing their physical independence," said Amanda Crump, one of the occupational therapists. On any given day, there can be up to six occupational or physical therapists at the school.

On Friday morning, an ambulance was called to the school, because a student in the OT/PT room had a medical emergency. It's not necessarily an uncommon experience.

"This is the second time this week we've called an ambulance," Mason said.

Preparing for the move

Keeping the needs of those students in mind, the district is proposing to move the Bullock program in its entirety to Rogers Garden, a school that opened in 2009 and has sat virtually empty ever since. Greene is proposing to house the Bullock students in the main building at Rogers Garden, behind the office areas. The other building would serve as the K-5 building for traditional students. Early learning classrooms currently at Rogers would be broken up into surrounding schools.

After looking at the district's enrollment trends and school conditions, Greene recommended shutting down Orange Ridge at the end of this school year as one way to help balance the issues. Other schools would need to be looked at in the long run, but the Orange Ridge-Rogers Garden merger is the most immediate proposal.

The two schools are less than a mile apart and Rogers Garden is a school of choice, meaning no students are zoned to attend there, only students whose parents chose to send them to Rogers Garden. Greene said the proximity, the lack of an attendance zone and the conditions of both facilities led to the proposal to move the bulk of Orange Ridge students to Rogers Garden.

Committees were set up in March to look at the attendance zones around Orange Ridge and help split that attendance zone among nearby schools, with most of the children going to Rogers Garden. Some students will transfer to Oneco, Samoset or Daughtrey.

Ballard Elementary School's zone was also affected.

The school board has not formally voted on the proposal, but it voiced approval for Greene's plan at a workshop. The board will see specific attendance zone proposals during a workshop Tuesday and a vote is scheduled for April 12.

"Whatever the students are receiving here, they'll be receiving at Rogers Garden," Greene told Orange Ridge-Bullock parents during a parent meeting.

If the move happens, Greene told parents there will be some type of open house or field trip to see the Rogers Garden facility. And there's a process for the teacher and aides to change schools, but Greene told parents she expects many of the Bullock teachers to move with the school next year.

Moving into a site unseen is troubling for Rezola, he said. The decision could be made and he said he doesn't know if he thinks it's the best for his child, since he hasn't seen the facility.

"How do you move into a house if you don't know if your furniture is going to fit?" he said Friday.

Rezola will be out of town for work when the board makes it decision and right now, he's frustrated by the unknowns. As someone who lives in Parrish and is seeing growth explode, Rezola understand the need for new schools and redistricting changes. But he wishes the conversation had looked at building a new type of center for the children Bullock serves.

"I felt left out as a parent," he said.

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

This story was originally published April 3, 2016 at 12:07 AM with the headline "As Manatee school district prepares to shut down Orange Ridge, Bullock families prepare for move to Rogers Garden ."