LARGO — Pinellas County School Board members said yes Tuesday night to Superintendent Kevin Hendrick's latest round of school closures and conversions, including a Tarpon Springs overhaul that sent some Sunset Hills Elementary families out of the boardroom in tears.
The vote follows more than two hours of public comment from over 60 parents, teachers and students. It locks in the changes in time for the district's school choice application fairs, which start today.
What closes, and when
Four schools will shut down outright at the end of the 2026–27 school year:
- Kings Highway Elementary Magnet in Clearwater
- Blanton Elementary
- Bear Creek Elementary
- Lealman Innovation Academy
Students will be reassigned to nearby schools with open seats. Several other schools technically close so a different program can take over the building, which is why tallies differ: the Tampa Bay Times counted six closures and FOX 13 counted five.
- Pinellas Park Elementary becomes a fundamental school, with a new fundamental program opening on the current campus.
- Azalea Elementary expands into a K–8, and FOX 13 reported that Azalea Middle will relocate to the Boca Ciega High School campus.
- Tarpon Springs gets two K–8 schools in place of three campuses, detailed below.
John M. Sexton Elementary in St. Petersburg was not part of Tuesday's vote. District planners are still studying options for schools along the 16th Street N corridor after parents pushed back on closing it.
The Tarpon Springs fight
Most of the night's emotion came from Tarpon Springs. Under the plan, Sunset Hills Elementary moves onto the Tarpon Springs Middle campus, which becomes a traditional neighborhood K–8. The Sunset Hills campus then turns into a fundamental K–8 run by the expanded Tarpon Springs Fundamental program, and the small Tarpon Springs Fundamental Elementary building closes. Those changes start in the 2027–28 school year.
Sunset Hills wasn't in Hendrick's original plan. It was added about a week before the vote, after complaints that the first version would leave the city without a neighborhood middle school. Sunset Hills parents said they were left out of that conversation.
“If you chose to close our only zoned elementary school and put a lottery school in its place, you are not only hurting the students and faculty of our school, you are forever changing the community,” one resident told the board, ABC Action News reported. Tarpon Springs Fundamental parents backed the compromise. “The teachers, the staff, they're what are the heart of the school,” parent Maggie Cohn said.
Board member Lisa Cane said she hadn't heard a better idea than the superintendent's, but moved to push the vote to Oct. 27 so more families could weigh in. “A short delay may not change outcomes,” she said. “I do think it is the right thing to do.” The motion died without a second, and the Tarpon Springs plan passed 6–1.
That's when many Sunset Hills supporters walked out. “We just got kicked out of our school,” parent Irene Romero said as she left, according to the Times.
Board member Eileen Long, who joined by Zoom, said the board had to act “proactively rather than reactively.” Hendrick told FOX 13 the original plan would likely have meant “closing Sunset Hills just by attrition a year or two from now.”
Why the district says it had to act
Pinellas has been losing students for a decade. The county averaged about 10,000 births a year in the 1990s and now sees fewer than 7,000, according to the district. The Times reported that 41 elementary schools have fewer than 300 students and 45 schools are below 60% capacity.
The approved changes remove roughly 4,500 to 5,000 empty seats out of nearly 45,000, depending on the count, and the district has estimated savings of about $25 million a year. Vice chair Dawn Peters and other board members warned this round won't be the last.
What families should know now
- Priority seats: Hendrick said Sunset Hills families will get top priority for open seats at the expanded Tarpon Springs Fundamental next fall, and Pinellas Park Elementary families get the same priority for that school's new fundamental program.
- Choice applications: Application program fairs begin this week. Details are on the district's Planning for Progress page.
- Next steps: The district plans a community meeting to walk Tarpon Springs families through the changes, with more details due at a board meeting later this month. Boundary and zoning details for the other affected schools will follow.
Tampa Bay Observer previewed the vote in Tuesday's story on the closure list.