FORT PIERCE — Just a few short years ago, St. Lucie County couldn’t build schools or hire teachers fast enough.

Teachers were recruited nationwide, even internationally, for one of the fastest growing areas in the country. In one two-year stretch, the school district built six new schools, including two high schools, to accommodate thousands of new students. A temporary school, made of portables, was built in 2007 because construction simply couldn’t keep pace with the growth.

Then the bottom fell out.  

Dawn Shelton gives her son, Josh, 9, who is in the fourth grade at Port St. Lucie Elementary, a hug outside the school on Thursday after talking about the closing of the school.

And Thursday, the crisis reached into the classroom.

The St. Lucie County School District, the county’s largest employer, laid off 331 people, including 157 teachers, and acknowledged that it would close two schools, including the temporary one built just two years ago, and consolidate its alternative schools.

The district will try to place the children in nearby schools and most of the teachers at the two schools will move, too.

School officials also plan to recommend to the school board that cuts be made to the school resource officer program and athletics, that employees take a pay cut, that transportation to magnet schools be limited and that substitutes be used less frequently in the schools, according to a 32-page proposal by Superintendent Michael Lannon released late Thursday.

The school board is expected to discuss those suggestions — totaling about $30 million in cuts — at its meeting Tuesday. A vote on the cuts will most likely come in April. The public will have a chance to comment at a town hall meeting March 31.

News spread rapidly Thursday as word got around from parents and teachers at the schools slated to close, Port St. Lucie Elementary and Southbend K-8 School, both in Port St. Lucie. Staff members and parents at those schools were informed Wednesday; school officials made the announcement Thursday after rumors began swirling.

The layoffs and school closures prompted concern, even outrage.

“We have to deal with it, and I don’t think it’s fair,” said Dawn Shelton, whose two sons attend Port St. Lucie Elementary. “These kids have been together, they have friends, why should they have to move?”

Wiping away tears, she said: “We’re bailing out businesses — bail out the schools.”

Seth Andreozzi, 6, who is in the kindergarten at Port St. Lucie Elementary School, leaves the school grounds on Thursday.

Diane Laster, a 25-year veteran of Port St. Lucie Elementary, said they have heard rumors all year that the school would close, but staff members hoped its A-rating would save it.

“No matter where they send us, we’ll still keep doing the job. It’s just we’ve been together so long it’s heartbreaking,” she said.

St. Lucie leaders wondered what effect such cuts would have on the local economy and a school system that often has struggled academically alongside its neighbors in Martin and Indian River counties.

St. Lucie now has one of the highest rates of foreclosure in the country and a double-digit rate of unemployment. Government jobs, once a staple of the local economy, have dried up by the hundreds.

Paula Lewis, chairwoman of the St. Lucie County Commission, called the proposed cuts “horrifying.”

“We do a good job here, but continually taking away your front-line workers, your teachers, how can you do that?” she said.

But St. Lucie school officials say they no longer have a choice.

Facing repeated drops in state education funding and declining revenues, the school district cut $23 million from its budget for the 2008/09 school year. The estimated $30 million cut for the 2009/10 school year falls somewhere in the middle of the best and worst case scenarios the district can expect based on often-changing state estimates of revenue shortfalls, said Tim Bargeron, the district’s chief financial officer.

About 84 percent of the district’s $297 million operating budget is spent on employees, and contracts are renewed in May, he said.

“We have to have a balanced budget for 2009/10,” he said. “We can’t just sit back on our hands and hope it doesn’t happen.”

School and union officials have met more than a dozen times since December to discuss how to make the cuts.

“We met with the understanding and knowledge that we were going to be in a boat that was taking on water,” said Vicki Rodriguez, vice president of the teachers union.

But some state legislators questioned why St. Lucie was moving forward with cuts before the state budget is complete and the school district’s fiscal year doesn’t start until July 1.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander, whose district includes a portion of St. Lucie County, advised the school board to hold off until later this month.

“They may want to give it a week or two before they decide what their cut is to find out what we’re actually talking about. I know the Senate’s plan will do its best to maintain funding for K-12 school systems,” said Alexander, R-Lake Wales.

School officials, however, say legislators have been wrong before and they don’t have room for errors when facing such a large cut.

“We’re not crying wolf,” Rodriguez said. “This is truly a devastating impact.”

Bargeron agreed: “Go back 18 months and ask (legislators) if St. Lucie County was going to be down (millions), what do you think their answer would be?”

Tags: Port St. Lucie Elementary, Schools, St. Lucie County

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 10:15 am and is filed under Fort Pierce, Port St. Lucie, Schools, St. Lucie County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.