Outcry Over Gifted Decision at Challenger

BROOKSVILLE - When you're a kid, the thought of switching schools can be downright terrifying.

That's why local students are doing what they can to keep gifted services at Challenger K-8 School of Science and Mathematics.

At Tuesday's Hernando County School Board meeting, 11-year-old Lucy Fuller stood bravely behind a podium and addressed the members of the Hernando County School Board, pleading with them to keep her classes and teachers the way they are.

"I have many friends who are not in gifted and a lot more who are in gifted but are willing to give up their gifted education to stay at Challenger," she said.

Since the majority - about one-third - of the county's gifted students in kindergarten through eighth grade currently attend Challenger, it is the school poised to be most affected by the board's recent decision to place the county's future centralized gifted education center at Explorer K-8 in Spring Hill.

Board members are not likely to change their minds. Offering services at more than one location would be too costly, and would also go against the "centralized center" concept.

Now, gifted students districtwide face a choice: Transfer to the new, fulltime gifted program at Explorer in August or remain at their current schools and opt out of gifted curriculum.

However, the number of teachers and students who actually decide to switch to the new school is yet to be seen.

Fuller displayed a petition with 150 signatures from fellow students, all supporting the desire to keep gifted services at Challenger.

Brooksville resident Angela Turnbull, who accompanied her 9-year-old gifted son, Dale, to the meeting, said that since Dale has a younger, non-gifted sibling at the school, she has no intention of pulling him out of the magnet school to attend the new program.

She expressed disappointment in the board's decision to send the program to Explorer, and said it would be too big of a risk to pull her third-grader out of a portfolio-based program, knowing he would have to return to his zoned school if he didn't like it.

Her son agreed.

"I like Challenger, I like my teachers and I like all the (projects) we do," Dale said. "I would be sad if they weren't there."

Lucy and her classmate, Laura Bennett, 11, also in sixth grade at Challenger, said they are both in the school's drama and reading club.

Earlier this year, their gifted teacher met with parents and agreed to follow the students for their next two years of the program. With the new center, this plan will likely be dissolved, they said.

"I (will) either have to give up my many plans for the upcoming years and become separated from my friends or give up my gifted education," Lucy told the board.

"Some of our friends live too far away to go to Explorer," Laura said. "And I want to do chorus next year."

Challenger was initially selected as the top choice by the board's gifted education task force.

However, the board eventually went with Explorer - a brand-new neighborhood school - because Challenger does not have enough space to accommodate anticipated future growth of the program.

COMING FRIDAY:

The Making Of A Smart Student

A Few More Ways Hernando's Gifted Education Center May Change Things.