Dr. García High's 'badly flawed' attendance map was suddenly overhauled. What happened?

Update: The Palm Beach County School Board approved a final attendance map for Dr. Joaquín García High on March 29. Read about it here.

Tensions reached a peak as the Palm Beach County School Board recently overhauled the attendance zones for the district's newest high school, Dr. Joaquín García High, and moved students who didn't previously know their neighborhoods were in the running to be rezoned.

After more than an hour of discussion Feb. 15 and a dozen comments from the public, the board passed several changes to the existing map, including:

• Moving one Wellington neighborhood back to Wellington High from Palm Beach Central.

• Moving a west Boynton neighborhood to Park Vista from Boynton Beach High.

• Moving unincorporated neighborhoods to Park Vista from Boynton Beach High.

• Moving a Greenacres neighborhood from Dr. García High to Palm Beach Central.

Board Chair Frank Barbieri worried the changes were going too far.

"We're actually putting out (a new boundary map) without any input from the community," he said as the board considered several more potential changes to the map. "Tomorrow morning, people are going to wake up and say, 'I never heard about anybody moving our community to this school. I thought this was settled.' "

The boundary process for Dr. García High has been contentious from its start in early December. The school is being constructed on Lyons Road in the western Lake Worth area and will open this fall. It needs to fit neatly into a jigsaw puzzle of school boundaries that split nearly 22,000 students among eight high schools.

Among those concerned with the boundary process are parents and elected officials in Greenacres, who say kids in the city are being sent unfairly to five different high schools, parents with grave worries about traffic safety at their neighborhood's entrance and advocates who say that some communities are being unfairly burdened while others are getting everything the residents want.

"This is a badly flawed map for the simple reason that it discriminates in favor of an affluent community to the specific expense and detriment of poor communities of color," said Mabel Melton, a member of the advisory boundary committee that held more than 22 hours of public meetings and listened to hundreds of public comments to come up with its recommended boundary map.

School board members addressed some of those concerns Feb. 16 with their changes and their statements.

"It seems we selected from certain (neighborhoods) where, in my opinion, we believed people would not say anything about it, to inconvenience them by making them drive 3 additional miles or get on a bus," board member Alexandria Ayala said of busing students of color farther away from home to different schools. "There are other ways to solve this problem, and it just seems like the creativity process was stopped because we just needed to get something through."

The board will vote and finalize the map at its March 29 meeting.

See the last round of changes: Here's who Palm Beach County school superintendent thinks should go to new Dr. García High

Whose voice is the loudest? Some parents find attendance boundaries for new Palm Beach County high school 'outrageous'

Who was Dr. García? 5 things to know about Joaquín García whose name will adorn new Palm Beach County high school

Here are the changes the board agreed on Wednesday:

1. Two Wellington neighborhoods shaken up by board flip-flop

The school district divides Palm Beach County into groups of neighborhoods close to each other, known as SACs, to create school boundaries.

One group of neighborhoods, mostly within the village of Wellington west of State Road 7 and surrounding Lake Worth Road, has been controversial throughout the boundary process.

Although most residents in the area live about 4 miles from Dr. García High, parents and elected officials in Wellington want the area to remain zoned for Palm Beach Central next year, which is 6 miles away.

Board members first voted 4-3 to move about 260 students who live in the collection of gated neighborhoods to Dr. García's attendance zone.

But later in the meeting, the board reconsidered the vote. Edwin Ferguson and Karen Brill switched their earlier vote, siding with Marcia Andrews, Barbara McQuinn and Barbieri to support keeping the communities at Palm Beach Central.

Also at the meeting, the board voted unanimously to move a small neighborhood just south of the intersection of Forest Hill Boulevard and State Road 7 back to Wellington High.

Superintendent Mike Burke moved the neighborhood in his recommended map in order to make a cleaner attendance zone for Palm Beach Central. Parents said they were caught by surprise that their students may be moved without the opportunity to weigh in.

Burke called his move a "mistake."

2. Small Boynton Waters neighborhood moved so students can walk to school

Although the issue was not previously discussed by the advisory committee, Brill asked that the kids in the Boynton Waters neighborhood, just north of the intersection of Jog Road and Boynton Beach Boulevard, be sent to Park Vista instead of Boynton Beach High.

The neighborhood of about 11 students falls inside a 2-mile radius around Park Vista, which Brill said means those students could walk or bike to school.

Brill's motion passed by a unanimous vote.

3. Isola Bella residents with dangerous intersection get a win

An outspoken contingent of parents from Isola Bella, a gated neighborhood just south of Hypoluxo Road, got what they were asking for when the board voted to rezone their students from Dr. García High to Park Vista to avoid a dangerous left turn for students.

The entrance to the community has been the site of more than 200 crashes since the start of 2020, according to records residents said they got from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

"This turn has caused a ridiculous amount of harm to many people," resident Rebecca Jacobson told the board. "This number will most certainly go up if we add in a group of young, inexperienced, new drivers trying to make a left-hand turn to Dr. García High."

4. Greenacres neighborhood moved to help curb traffic issues

Finally, Ayala moved to push a neighborhood in Greenacres back to Palm Beach Central from Dr. García High.

She said students in that neighborhood can walk to Palm Beach Central, and the move would cut down on traffic at the saturated intersection of Forest Hill Boulevard and Jog Road.

The board agreed.

Will there be enough students at Dr. García High?

As so many students are moved out of the attendance zone of Dr. García High, some school board members questioned whether the new school with room for 2,600 students will have enough students to feel like a community.

All rising juniors and seniors at any school affected by the redrawn boundaries are going to be allowed to stay at their current schools, according to the current proposal from the school board. The proposal includes siblings of those students.

That has appeased parents who were worried about uprooting their students in a year so crucial to their post-graduation options.

Burke said he plans to establish an enrollment process for Dr. García High this spring that would allow students from anywhere in the district to apply to attend.

Board members appeared to recognize the confusion and hurt the boundary process has caused. Still, Erica Whitfield said she has confidence the new school will succeed.

"I’m hopeful that this community will adopt this school," she said. "I’m looking forward to seeing people in this community love this new school."

Katherine Kokal is a journalist covering education at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at kkokal@pbpost.com. Help support our work, subscribe today!

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Dr. Garcia high school attendance boundary map changed by school board