neighbor<\/a>, John Pratchios, who lives less than 600 feet from the school and says drop-off and pick-up traffic is already unmanageable. He worries about the school tripling or quadrupling its current enrollment. <\/p>\n\u201cIf you get three to four times more traffic, parents dropping their children off and picking them up \u2014 already it does not handle with one-third to one-quarter the amount,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Duval County School Board is set to vote in August on closing Ortega Elementary and consolidating it into Venetia Elementary by 2028. That same meeting will also include a vote to designate the Ortega property as surplus. The timeline was previously set for the 2030-2031 school year.<\/p>\n
DCPS sent us a statement about neighborhood concerns regarding the expansion of the elementary school.<\/p>\n
We are currently in the planning phases of this project. Traffic, environmental, and geotechnical studies are underway, with traffic study results expected this fall. Those findings, along with community feedback, will help inform the final design.<\/p>\n
We appreciate that members of the Venetia community have shared their concerns directly with us, and we look forward to hearing and considering the diverse perspectives of all stakeholders \u2014 including residents, families, staff, and students \u2014 as we continue to create opportunities for engagement, including tomorrow\u2019s community meeting regarding this topic.<\/p>\n
Duval County Public Schools<\/p>\n
Share your comments below about your thoughts or concerns about the expansion of Venetia Elementary.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Duval County Schools will host a community meeting Thursday at 5 p.m. at Hyde Grove…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1127,1040,116,118,117,7453,4348,136769],"class_list":["post-341614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-construction","tag-dcps","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-meeting","tag-schools","tag-venetia-elementary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}