St. Lucie County Public Schools open for students on Aug. 10, and WPTV’s Port St. Lucie reporter Tyler Hatfield spoke to the school district about what families can expect this year.<\/p>\n
WATCH WPTV’S COVERAGE BELOW:<\/p>\n
Families are already preparing for the first-day. Jovani Taylor said he has been getting his daughter, Jayla, ready for the new school year.<\/p>\n
“Purchase school supplies for books, clothing for school,” Taylor said.<\/p>\n
Jayla said she is looking forward to fourth grade.<\/p>\n
“I’m very excited,” Jayla said.<\/p>\n
Another parent, Julia Lopez, said her daughter will be starting VPK. Julia also noted the district’s growth firsthand.<\/p>\n
“I see schools like almost every corner,” Julia said.<\/p>\n
WPTV\u2019s Tyler Hatfield sat down with Superintendent Jon Prince ahead of the first day of school.<\/p>\n
“We’re ready to kick it off,” Prince said.<\/p>\n
To keep up with growth, the district has been building new schools. Tradition Lakes K-8 is the newest, welcoming students in western St. Lucie County.<\/p>\n
“We know in the Tradition area there, that’s an area of very, very expansive growth,” Prince said.<\/p>\n
Despite that growth, Prince said enrollment is expected to be flat this year at 42,505 students. Over the past seven years, enrollment has increased by 7 percent, but Prince attributes this year’s plateau to more families choosing homeschooling or private schools.<\/p>\n
“There are so many options for families right now that makes it a little bit uncertain where our enrollment is going to be when the first day starts,” Prince said.<\/p>\n
Last year, the state projected an increase of 350 students, but the district instead lost 150, costing it around $14 million in state and federal funding.<\/p>\n
This year’s tentative district budget is $1.07 billion, nearly $60 million less than last year’s final budget.<\/p>\n
“We had a significant number of cuts. Most of them did not directly impact schools. Most of them were at the district level,” Prince said.<\/p>\n
Prince said no staff were laid off but were instead moved to other positions.<\/p>\n
Even with the budget cuts, the district is adding new programs. Two new courses focused on artificial intelligence will be available to students this year at Legacy High School.<\/p>\n
“We need to provide an avenue based on future legislation as to what that’s going to look like for students if they’re interested in that field of work,” Prince said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Lucie County Public Schools open for students on Aug. 10, and WPTV’s Port St. Lucie reporter Tyler…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-363307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363307","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=363307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}