Superintendent to recommend multiple consolidations and boundary changes after facilities review

Corey Wright, presenting the district’s long-range facilities work, said the recommendations the superintendent will bring to the board in December include consolidating Anchor Academy into Mayport for implementation in 2026–27 and closing Long Branch Elementary while assigning its attendance boundary to the remodeled R. L. Brown facility and preserving a gifted-and-talented magnet program under the name Long Branch Academy at R. L. Brown. Wright said Anchor Academy has been chronically underenrolled for more than five years and that consolidating into Mayport would maintain existing programs without capital upgrades.

Wright grounded the proposals in the district’s ACE (Academic Community Excellence) process and cited policy 8.53 (consolidation impact review) and related high-school boundary policy language used to guide community meetings, working-group deliberations and sunshine training prior to an executive recommendation and board vote. He summarized working-group feedback: the Anchor–Mayport consolidation working group voted that they did not agree with the proposed consolidation, and the Long Branch working group recommended programmatic additions to keep both campuses open. Despite that feedback, Wright said the superintendent’s recommendation would be brought forward after the required community meetings and working-group process.

Staff reviewed retrospective data from closures since 2020, showing a range of outcomes. In several past consolidations the majority of students remained in district schools although some individual consolidations saw notable student movement: Wright cited examples showing that the share of students who chose the consolidated receiving school varied widely (roughly 50%–76% in slides) while the total remaining in the district ranged from about 70% to 92% depending on the case. Board members pressed whether multiple consolidations in a single year could compound enrollment losses beyond the district’s typical ~1% annual net decline; Wright said last year’s larger consolidation cohort did not produce more than a 1% net enrollment loss districtwide.

Wright presented estimated operational savings from prior closures, using a staff-allocation model and examples that included multi-year cost-avoidance figures the slide deck aggregated to roughly $22 million. Board members asked staff to clarify assumptions (capital excluded from recurring savings, transportation not included in the operational-savings table) and to show per-year impacts and how transportation or magnet busing might change net savings.

Staff also previewed a boundary option for Johnny Ford that would give current Johnny Ford residents and new applicants within magnet parameters top lottery priority for the Montessori program for the 2026–27 application; a set of high-school boundary adjustments was shown intended to address overutilization at several campuses. Wright said field visits with principals and operations staff had identified empty classrooms in some high schools, and that FISH-report percentages may overstate actual constrained space in certain cases.

No consolidation decisions were made at the meeting; the superintendent’s formal recommendations will appear on the December board agenda for action. The meeting adjourned after a motion by board member Bull Duke, seconded by Vice Chair Carney, which passed.