Manatee County school district unveils opening plans for K-8 school

As construction continues on the new K-8 school off Uihlein Road and Academic Avenue in Lakewood Ranch, the School District of Manatee County is planning the school’s future. 

The School Board of Manatee County approved the school’s opening plans during a board meeting Sept. 24.

The school will be the first K-8 school the district will construct from the ground up. 

“We know there’s a lot of interest and excitement for this project,” said Jason Wysong, the superintendent of the school district. “There have been a couple of articles recently in different Florida media outlets about K-8 schools and specifically that more districts are turning to that model because families are saying, ‘We want the convenience of as many of our children as possible on the same campus, on the same bell schedule, with the same communication system.’”

Wysong said a K-8 model allows the transition from elementary grades to middle school grades to be more meaningful for families and for the school. 

The primary need of the East County K-8 school is to alleviate the over-capacity B.D. Gullett Elementary School, which has nearly 1,400 students. The school’s capacity is approximately 927 students. 

The new school, which has a construction budget of $106 million, is projected to open the elementary portion in August 2025, followed by the middle school in August 2026. 

Naming the school

The deadline for submitting names for the K-8 school is Sept. 27, and name nominations will be posted on the district’s website Oct. 1. 

The school board will then discuss the nominations during its regular meeting Oct. 8, and a list of finalists will be selected. 

At its regular meeting Oct. 22, the board will select the name of the K-8 school. 

The public will be able to provide comments on the names until the Oct. 22 meeting. 

Enrollment

With the School District of Manatee County opening the K-8 school in Lakewood Ranch, as well as a school for grades 4-8 in Parrish in 2025, and more schools the following year, Wysong said the district will not create an attendance zone yet for the Lakewood Ranch K-8 school. 

“Our staff believes that if we draw that zone for 2025-2026, we might have to move the lines again for 2026-2027 and then all kinds of details start to become problematic,” Wysong said. 

He said the district does not want to fill the school to capacity since it will continue to be a construction site through the 2025-2026 school year and there is more projected growth in the coming years. 

 “We have to open with limited enrollment, saving space so that when we draw that attendance zone, we have room for the students who are in that zone, and then for whatever additional capacity we want to save for future growth as we plan out whether we need more beyond this,” Wysong said.

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To enroll students in the Lakewood Ranch K-8 school for the elementary grades opening in August 2025, Wysong said the district will ask for voluntary enrollment and consider the families who enroll the “founding families” of the school.

Families who were reassigned to Freedom, Gilbert W. McNeal or Braden River elementary schools due to Gullett Elementary being over capacity, and who live in geographic proximity to the new school, will have an opportunity to voluntarily enroll. Families who voluntarily enroll will have to provide transportation for their students. 

These families will be invited to attend an information meeting in October to learn more information. The exact date of the meeting has yet to be determined.

Pending acceptances, the initial recruitment for voluntary reassignment will be open to families who live south of State Road 64, east of Lorraine Road, west of Bourneside Boulevard, north of 44th AVenue between Lorraine Road and Uihlein Road and south of 44th Avenue to south of Rangeland Parkway between Uihlein Road and Bourneside Boulevard.

“The reason the geographic proximity is important is that although we don’t know exactly where an attendance boundary line will be drawn because that process has not started, the geographic areas around the school have the highest likelihood of being included in that attendance area,” Wysong said. 

Wysong said if the district enrolled students through school choice, the district runs the risk of not achieving a reduction in capacity at Gullett Elementary and not having enough space for families who live in the school's attendance area. 

Any remaining seats, if available, will be allocated for hardship applications.

Wysong said the district has not determined a number of open seats. He wants to see how many families will be interested in voluntarily enrolling first. 

In 2025, the school board will determine school zones for all schools.

School programming

Todd Richardson, who is the current principal of Gullett Elementary and an executive principal,  has been selected as the principal of the K-8 school. 

He will be visiting K-8 schools in other school districts to see how they’ve opened, and what has and hasn’t worked for them. His 27 years in education has been at the elementary level.

Richardson said being the principal of the K-8 school will give him the unique opportunity to guide students through their formative years as they enter school at 4 or 5 years old and leave at 14 years old. 

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“That’s a tremendous opportunity for us to make a great impact for kids and their families,” he said. 

Richardson would like to implement a leadership program to provide opportunities for middle school students. A potential program could be the Franklin-Covey Leader in Me program, which already is in place at Gilbert W. McNeal Elementary School.

“We want to teach them values, maturity, respect and things where when they are on our campus, they are truly leaders in helping develop the next generation of middle schoolers because those (elementary) students are just a few 100 yards away versus at a different campus,” he said. 

Leader in Me is an evidence-based, comprehensive educational leadership and school improvement model. It empowers students to lead in their own education while learning the seven habits of highly effective people, which include being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, putting first things first, thinking win-win, seeking first to understand and then be understood, synergizing, and seeking continuous improvement and renewal. 

Richardson said the school will be looking for unique community partnerships. 

He said a potential partnership is with Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium, which is building its new aquarium near University Town Center and Nathan Benderson Park. 

The actual layout and design of the school will also be suitable for learning neighborhoods, which are set up throughout the entire campus. The neighborhoods will have offices for deans and school counselors as well as meeting rooms and other spaces. 

Richardson said the learning neighborhoods will allow resources to be closer to the students.

“If a problem does come up, if a student needs to speak to a counselor or if there is a disciplinary issue, those people are already in those areas of the building, versus being in one remote location of a main office,” he said. 

Construction continues

Design of the school began in August 2023 with construction starting in March 2024. 

The school is a two-story prototype with 1,620 student stations. Construction on the elementary portion is 13% complete and 6% complete for the middle school.

Building 1 will consist of the administration area and media center. The tie beams of the building are complete and steel is in progress. 

Building 2, which will be elementary classrooms, is a hollow core with roof panels being constructed.

Foundation for building 4, which will have the gym, and building 5, which will have the cafeteria, is in progress. 

Substantial completion of the buildings necessary to open the school for elementary students in August 2025 is expected in July 2025. Substantial completion of the middle school portion is expected in March 2026. 

“We’ve had some challenges dealing with Hurricane Debby, but we have a great construction team, and they’re doing a great job of keeping the project on track,” said Reginald Golf, the project director. 

There is a dedicated car loop, bus loop and loop specifically for pre-K students. 

Thinking ahead, the district already has designated an area attached to building 2 for an addition. 

Goff said the addition could be one or two stories depending on the need. The addition is not included in the initial construction of the school. 

“That’s going to come down to growth projections, competitiveness (through school choice), where the attendance boundaries ultimately fall, and funding. There’s too many variables to know how quickly that will be built,” Wysong said. 

As for the design of the school, Richardson said it was “done with a lot of forethought” from the architect, HKS Architects, as every element of the interior design has an aquatic ecosystem theme. 

The area for pre-K, kindergarten and first grade is designed to look like salt marshes as they serve as the nursing grounds for young marine life and delicate insects. As students progress through the grades, they will go through various other ecosystems, including wetlands for second and third grades, flatwoods for fourth grade, sand hills for fifth grade, riparian for sixth and seventh grades and finally the coral reef for eighth grade.