Kristi Bacus, mother of three, has lived in Nocatee since the community was created. Over the years, she said her kids have been re-zoned from one over-crowded school to another. “I can’t say enough great things about the educators, the leadership within the schools. My children have had great experiences, but,” she said, “every year is a challenge when you have so many bodies that you’re trying to keep safe and help them learn.”
That is why Bacus and dozens of other concerned parents attended the “Community Conversation” event at Nease High School Monday night. It was an opportunity for them to hear how St. Johns School District leaders are addressing a housing boom in and around Nocatee that could lead to yet another round of school zoning changes for families in the area.
“Our district has not seen this rapid growth before,” said Cathy Mittelstadt, Deputy Supervisor for Operations at the District. “Right now, Palm Valley Academy is over 1,800 students, so we know that we need to pay attention on how to respond to this and be more immediate with our response.”
Mittelstadt says that response includes the construction of a new K-8 school as well as a new high school, both scheduled to open in the summer of 2021.
“It is a burden to build on time. It is a burden to do some of these [things],” says District Superintendent Tim Forson. “[But] it is a wonderful celebration that you and your families are in our system and our system continues to grow and get better because of that.”
Forson said zoning for the new high school will be finalized in the spring of 2020, while the middle school will have its zoning figured out by early 2021. He said the District will try to protect “exit grades” like 5th and 8th grade from having to be re-zoned. “[But] if you have a young family and you’re coming into our school district,” he added, “there is a very high likelihood that your child will be re-zoned at some point in their career and maybe more than once.”
Mittelstadt says Nocatee has grown by more than a thousand new students over the last two years, and construction permits for new homes are moving at a very fast rate. “The acceleration of that rapid growth from Nocatee is an eye-opener for the school district,” she said. “So, we have to be very mindful of planning strategically in this particular area as we try to set up new schools to meet the growth.”
Nocatee residents like Bacus say one way the District can do that is by zoning its new schools based more on the projections of the area’s housing future rather than on other factors. “I think we need to be cognizant of where the growth is happening when we think about the zoning boundaries,” she said. “As we start talking about zoning for this next school site, which is down Crosswater Parkway, neighborhoods have just started breaking ground down there, so we’ll be in this same conversation in two years.”
