MILTON — While student enrollment numbers continue to climb in the Santa Rosa County School District, one school official reports the Pace, Navarre and Gulf Breeze are seeing an increase.
“Until now we have actually added 346 students,” said Assistant Superintendent Bill Emerson to the school board during last week’s meeting.
Emerson anticipates the enrollment numbers to further increase until Labor Day.
While school officials may not be surprised by the growth in Navarre and Pace, Emerson said growth in Gulf Breeze is significant.
“If you look at Gulf Breeze Elementary, it’s at projection and the middle and the high school’s are both significantly above projection,” he said. “That is growth area we haven’t seen in a lot of years and we haven’t changed (the school) boundaries. It means people are moving down towards Gulf Breeze as well.”
According to enrollment projections made prior to the school year and current enrollment numbers, provided by the school district, both Gulf Breeze Middle School and high school currently have more than 50 students enrolled than anticipated prior to the beginning of the school year.
With several schools are approaching or exceeding student capacities, Emerson said upcoming state-mandated enrollment changes will have to be considered.
By next school year, the school district must have a policy in place for controlled open enrollment stemming from House Bill 7029, approved by Florida Senator Rick Scott and passed by the Florida Senate.
Currently the school district offers a reassignment process for students who meet certain criteria. A few examples include a court order, medical situations or military preference.
In addition, parents do have the opportunity to submit a letter explaining their child’s situation.
“What we will begin to have to consider when we don’t meet those special criterias and mark ‘other’,” he said. “We have to show what the capacity is at those schools and we will set that capacity. We have to come up with a process for what capacity we will use.”
One example is should a school be considered at max capacity with 830 students and the school has a student population of 800.
“Then how would we fill those 30 seats,” Emerson said. “If we have less than 30 applicants, then we would just fill them with those people, if we have more than 30 applicants there would have to be some kind of lottery system in which we would have to specify.”
Emerson requested to form a committee to help form a plan for controlled open enrollment which would then need approval from the Florida Department of Education. The request for the committee was approved by the board with School board member Dr. Diane Scott serving on the committee.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Navarre, Pace and Gulf Breeze see increased student enrollment