LARGO — Pinellas County families with kids at more than a half-dozen campuses find out Tuesday night how far the School Board will go with Superintendent Kevin Hendrick's Planning for Progress cutbacks.
The board votes at 5 p.m. at the Pinellas County Schools Administration Building, 301 Fourth St. SW. District officials say the package is meant to save about $25 million a year as enrollment shrinks and the system carries roughly 45,000 vacant seats. Bay News 9 puts the number of students who could be directly affected at well over 1,000.
What's still on the closure list
Four full closures remain on tonight's agenda, unchanged since Hendrick rolled the plan out Sept. 10:
- Kings Highway Elementary in Clearwater, a magnet school with about 277 students
- Blanton Elementary
- Bear Creek Elementary
- Lealman Innovation Academy, a grades 6–12 campus; the district has said the building would be leased to Feeding Tampa Bay if the closure is approved
If the board says yes, those schools would shut after the 2026–27 school year. Students would be reassigned to nearby campuses with room, and the district says school-based staff would be offered other placements rather than laid off, according to Pinellas County Schools' Planning for Progress FAQ.
Consolidations and conversions also up for a vote
Tuesday's package is bigger than the four closures. Board members are also expected to weigh:
- Converting Pinellas Park Elementary from a traditional neighborhood school into a fundamental program (district materials describe a fundamental K–5 or K–8 shift beginning in 2027–28)
- Relocating Azalea Middle and turning Azalea Elementary into a K–8 on the middle school's campus in later years
- A revised Tarpon Springs plan that would create two K–8 campuses — a neighborhood K–8 at Sunset Hills Elementary and a fundamental K–8 at the Tarpon Springs Fundamental campus — after parents organized against an earlier one-campus merger
John M. Sexton Elementary in St. Petersburg is not on tonight's closure ballot. After parent pushback, Hendrick pulled it from the Oct. 13 list at an Oct. 6 workshop; the district says it will keep reviewing that campus and come back later this month. A separate idea to turn Boca Ciega High into a technical school is also off tonight's agenda and is still aimed at the 2028–29 school year.
Tampa Bay Observer covered the Sexton delay and Tarpon Springs rewrite when those revisions landed; tonight is the first up-or-down vote on the remaining closures and consolidations.
Why the district says it has to move
Hendrick has warned for more than a year that underused buildings are eating the budget. He has pointed to a long slide in local birth rates and empty seats across the county. Board member Caprice Edmond, who has toured affected neighborhoods, told Bay News 9 the job tonight is absorbing “the impact of the decisions that we’re going to make now, and how they weigh out in the future.”
Parents have pressed the board to think five and 10 years out, not just next year's ledger. Hendrick has said future enrollment, state rules and finances are hard to lock in, and that the board has to decide with the information it has now.
How to watch or weigh in
The meeting starts at 5 p.m. Tuesday at district headquarters in Largo. Public comment is on the agenda; families can also email the board at board@pcsb.org or the superintendent at super@pcsb.org. Zone and program details for any approved changes will come in follow-up boundary work, the district says.
We'll update after the votes land.