Board OKs Some Solutions To Explorer Overcrowding

The school district will take some steps to ease overcrowding at Explorer K-8.

The school board at a workshop Monday afternoon balked at more drastic measures, however, such as making the school a K-5 or moving the gifted center.

Explorer, with its enrollment of 1,952, is 59 students beyond its capacity this year, and that number is expected to rise unless the district takes action. The goal is to reduce enrollment by about 200 students.

So the district will require 42 students who live outside Explorer's zone but wound up enrolled there anyway to move to their neighborhood school.

And families who live close enough to attend J.D. Floyd K-8 will be asked to voluntarily move their children to that school. That has the potential to shift about 120 students out of Explorer, but that's a best-case scenario and at least some parents will want to stay.

"I think some of them will be glad to go back because (Floyd) is closer and it's less crowded," said Jim Knight, the district's director of student services.

Explorer will no longer be an option for parents allowed to move their child because their current school did not meet federal progress standards, a policy that will help cut 13 students next year. And there are 11 Explorer students on the waiting list to enroll at Challenger K-8 who will be given priority for admission to that school, Knight said.

Explorer is only one of 11 schools currently operating beyond capacity. The district has begun a major rezoning effort that would likely go before the board by December and take effect in the fall of 2010.

Some space will be freed up when the new high school on U.S. 19 north of State Road 50 opens next fall. A new elementary school on Deltona Boulevard in Spring Hill is slated to open in 2011.