PORT ST. LUCIE — Marie-Josee Roy, whose 8-year-old son attends Port St. Lucie Elementary, stood today around the corner from the school with a sign covered in children’s handprints that read: “These hands are the future. Why take away from them?”

Other parents held signs of their own: “Education Comes First” and “Schools are closing. What’s next?”

For these parents, an estimated $30 million shortfall for the St. Lucie County School District for the 2009/10 school year is personal: Port St. Lucie Elementary is one of two schools slated to close under budget cuts recommended by Superintendent Michael Lannon to account for the loss in revenue. Southbend K-8 School is the other.

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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.

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