PINELLAS PARK, Fla. — Pinellas County Schools is seeking community feedback as the district considers future changes tied to declining enrollment.
The district held three meetings around the county Wednesday, including one at Pinellas Park High School. Superintendent Kevin Hendrick said the district is looking at what makes sense in individual communities before making its next round of recommendations this fall.
At the Pinellas Park meeting, posters asked attendees for feedback on different topics, including whether they would support a new K-8 school in their area if it meant closing a traditional neighborhood school. People were given space to post their responses.
Hendrick discussed data from the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Department of Education showing births in Pinellas County dropped from more than 10,000 per year in 1990 to more than 7,000 in 2021. Out of the 10,000+ babies born in 1990, 81% of them were enrolled in Kindergarten in the 1995-96 school year. Now, 68% of the babies born in Pinellas in 2020 were enrolled in the 2025-26 school year.
Hendrick said district funding has not kept up with inflation, which has created a challenge for maintaining student programs in a fiscally responsible way.
“There isn’t a set number,” Hendrick said when asked about the possibility of additional school closures. “We’re not in a spot yet where we’re saying, ‘This is exactly what we have to do.’ There’s a lot of factors at play.
“We talked about the age of a facility — what does it cost to keep a facility going? Where is it located? What academic programs are there? So, we make sure that we have those available to every family in every neighborhood.”
Nani Wells, a Pinellas County Schools parent and teacher, said she suggested adding more fundamental or magnet schools in the middle part of the county.
“There’s not very many currently there,” Wells said. “I suggested to my school that I work at being one of them.”
The district recently closed two schools: Cross Bayou Elementary and Disston Academy. Students from those schools were rezoned to Bardmoor Elementary and Pinellas Central Elementary.
Hendrick said the district does not want to move those students again, and said students who switched to Bardmoor and Pinellas Central will be able to finish elementary school there.
When asked how this next round of recommendations could compare to the last one, Hendrick said it depends on the feedback the district receives.
“With 45,000 open seats, obviously, you could close a lot of schools, but we’re not interested in doing that,” he said. “We want to do what makes sense in a community.”
Residents who missed the meetings can still give feedback online.