- March 6, 2025
Two schools may close in Flagler County regardless of whether a 0.5 mill property tax passes at a special election in June.
The district’s schools are operating significantly below their capacity and student enrollment has been declining steadily all year, so the district could close both Wadsworth Elementary School and Indian Trails Middle School without overcrowding its remaining properties, said Janet Valentine, the district’s superintendent, at a budget workshop Thursday.
Closing the two schools would save the district about $3.19 million.
The conversation about closing schools arose when the Flagler County School Board hunted for cuts it could make if the 0.5 mill tax does not pass, creating a $1.8 million deficit in the district’s budget for next year. On Tuesday, the board spent all day deciding which programs it could cut, and closing a school was high on its priority list of things to avoid.
But things changed Thursday when Valentine distributed lists of the cost savings to the board and said Flagler’s students and teachers could fit in fewer schools.
School Board member Sue Dickinson asked why this conversation did not arise earlier and questioned whether it ever would have come up if it were not for the 0.5 mill discussion.
“The capacity (levels) didn’t happen overnight, and that means this info was known to someone, somewhere,” Dickinson said. “We are not using taxpayers’ dollars appropriately when we are operating two school buildings half-empty.”
If the district were to close Wadsworth and Indian Trails, it would delegate some of Wadsworth’s buildings to the adjacent Buddy Taylor Middle School to increase that school’s capacity.
Another option is closing just Old Kings Elementary School, at a savings of about $1.5 million.
“It looks like the schools might need to close no matter what,” School Board member Colleen Conklin said after the workshop. “I don’t think it would be fair to tell taxpayers that if they approve the 0.5 mill, they’ll save a school, because pass or fail, we’re still probably going to need to look at closing a school in the next year or two.”
The savings from closing schools come mostly from cutting administrative positions. Most teachers would migrate with their students to their newly assigned schools.
Rather than using the school closures as a potential emergency cut the district will make if the 0.5 mill tax doesn't pass, the board will instead consider closing schools independent of the outcome of the special election.
"It would be a lie to say to the public, vote for the 0.5 (mill tax) and you’ll save a school," Conklin said after the workshop.
Board member Andy Dance said after the workshop that closing a school may be a premature decision because enrollment has not been falling month-to-month long enough to gauge whether the trend is long-term.
“We need to be careful so that when we are increasing enrollment again, we aren’t overreacting with a quick closure of a school only to open it again,” Dance said.
Enrollment has dropped monthly for most of this school year, and the board predicts losing about 300 more students by the start of the next academic year.
Another concern with closing schools, Conklin said, is the risk of a charter school taking over the vacated building, which the law allows if a facility is not being used.
That could potentially catalyze enrollment decline if more students opt to attend the charter school. It also could pose a problem if enrollment turns around and the district suddenly needs its empty school. However, Conklin said that the board can write a clause into its contract with a charter school that would require the charter to vacate its property in a reasonable amount of time if the board needed the facility again. The School Board would need to approve a contract with a charter school before it could open.
The board is holding another emergency budget meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday to continue its discussion of budget cuts.
