Gifted Center Goes To Explorer

BROOKSVILLE - No one saw it coming.

But following hours of heated deliberation at an afternoon workshop Tuesday, Hernando County School Board members switched gears and voted 3-2 against placing the district's future gifted education center at Spring Hill's Challenger K-8 School of Mathematics and Science - and 4-1 for placing it at Explorer K-8, the new 2,100-student school set to open in August off Northcliffe Boulevard.

The center will aim to place more than 400 of the county's kindergarten through eighth grade students in gifted classes in one location, instead of the district's current means of offering separate classes at each school.

Challenger was initially selected as the top choice by the board's gifted education task force, who recommended the school because one-third of the district's gifted students currently attend the school and cross-county transportation is already in place for its magnet program students, among other reasons.

However, the total cost for the implementation of the program at Challenger - estimated at more than $1.4 million - was a sticking point at the workshop.

While final costs for placing the program at Explorer were not available at press time, earlier estimates suggested that renovation costs will be minimal. However, task force members speculated in January that since Explorer is a neighborhood school, transportation costs for a gifted program there could easily exceed $100,000, including the purchase of additional busses and fuel.

Superintendent Wayne Alexander and vice chair Jim Malcolm urged the board to reconsider Challenger.

"You've instantly, by moving to Explorer, maxed out that school," he said. "If we have to add a third floor to that school (to create more space), you're talking about a $10 to $12 million ticket."

But while Challenger has enough space for the number of gifted children in August, it does not have enough space to accommodate anticipated future growth of the program - a thought that helped sway board chair Sandra Nicholson toward Explorer.

"The majority of gifted students live near the new school, and I (fear we would be) eroding the wonderful program we have at Challenger by having it there," she said. "It really concerns me to place the program at a school knowing that in a year or two we'll have to move it."

While board member Diane Bonfield remained opposed to the concept and said she would rather see a centralized gifted program only for middle school students, rather than kindergarten-through-eighth grade, she conceded that Explorer seemed like the best option.

Board member Pat Fagan, who initially supported Challenger, followed suit.

"I'm a team player and I want what's best," he said. "I will change (my vote) to Explorer if that means it will be a success."

Malcolm, a member of the task force, was the lone dissenter.

A student is defined as "gifted" if he or she scores at least two standard points above the mean IQ score, and passes at least two sections on a state IQ test.

Once identified, students who qualify as "gifted" fall under the umbrella of exceptional student education, or ESE, and bring in about $2,100 more in state per-student funding.

This year, the district reported 2.5 percent of its elementary students as gifted. The current state average is 4.9. However, many other students may be unidentified.

The center is set to open in August.

However, the number of gifted students whose parents actually decide to switch to the new school is yet to be determined.

Now, the gifted task force has until March 31 to submit its recommendations to the board concerning curriculum and other details of the centralized program.

The next gifted task force meeting will take place at 4 p.m. Thursday in the media center at West Hernando Middle School, located at 14325 Ken Austin Parkway in Brooksville.