Pinellas Board Delays Student Assignment Package

LARGO - The Pinellas County School Board on Tuesday delayed final action on a controversial plan that would steer Pinellas County students to schools in their own neighborhoods.

School superintendent Clayton Wilcox said the latest delay could jeopardize the district's efforts to put into place next school year a plan to allow students to attend a school close to home.

Yet he recommended pulling the student assignment plan from the evening's agenda to work out issues board members raised earlier in the day. The board will revisit the plan at a workshop Tuesday, and possibly vote on it at a special meeting afterward.

"There's just too many unanswered questions for us" to move forward, Wilcox said. "The worst thing in the world is to start the plan and not have places for kids to go to school because we rushed it."

The questions deal with magnet and fundamental schools that draw a diverse mix of students from a wide area.

Earlier, a majority of board members voiced a desire for some form of "proximity preference" for all magnet and fundamental schools. That would set aside a certain percentage of seats at such schools for neighborhood children.

As proposed, the student assignment plan would offer proximity preference only at two elementary magnet schools: James Sanderlin and Douglas L. Jamerson, both in south St. Petersburg.

The concern among most board members was that a child living near a magnet or fundamental school would not get a chance to attend one, since such schools draw students from throughout the county or a large area.

Parents of students at those schools, though, are concerned that allowing the special schools to take in more neighborhood children would make them less diverse.

"The issue of setting proximity preferences, that's relatively easy," said Wilcox, adding that implementing it would be more difficult.

For instance, adding proximity seats at magnets and fundamentals could possibly shut out other applicants, he said.

"There's a cascading effect," Wilcox said. "It's not a simple thing."