{"id":368253,"date":"2026-08-11T10:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/368253\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T10:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:02:14","slug":"pinellas-polk-and-hernando-students-return-to-classes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/368253\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinellas, Polk and Hernando students return to classes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2013 Pinellas County students are returning to class on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the first day of school also in Polk and Hernando counties.<\/p>\n<p>In Pinellas County, the state\u2019s ninth-largest school district, school officials spent the summer soliciting feedback to see how best to move forward with closing and consolidating schools.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/baynews9.com\/fl\/tampa\/news\/2026\/01\/22\/parents-plan-to-push-back-against-cross-bayou-elementary-closure-\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">After closing Cross Bayou Elementary and Disston Academy for good in May<\/a>, the district is now looking at what schools could close at the end of the 2026-2027 school year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Polk County schools is looking at a challenging landscape for hiring and retaining teachers. The district is looking at about 500 instructional vacancies as school starts. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Hernando County Schools is celebrating the completion of a brand-new building.<\/p>\n<p>A joint building facility has been built between Weeki Wachee High School and Winding Waters K-8. Students from both schools will attend classes at the new facility at the start of the new school year.<\/p>\n<p>For important information about Back-to-School, explore\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/baynews9.com\/fl\/tampa\/news\/back-to-school\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bay News 9\u2019s school links<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2013 Pinellas County students are returning to class on Tuesday. It\u2019s the first day of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[54547,770,113,7086,115,596,1911,275,202,204,203,199,201,200,135],"class_list":["post-368253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-back-to-school","tag-community-news","tag-education","tag-hernando-county","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-polk-county","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368253","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=368253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}