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- Leon County School Board Member Alva Smith is pushing to reconsider school closures to address budget shortfalls.
- Closing a school could save the district an estimated $1 million for its operating budget.
- At least seven schools in the district are operating at 70% capacity or lower.
Despite efforts by district leadership to put discussion of the issue on pause, the conversation about closing schools in Leon County is far from over, at least for School Board member Alva Smith.
“Our CFO (chief financial officer) estimates that every school closure would be right at $1 million going right back into our operating budget,” Smith told the Tallahassee Democrat.
This comes after Superintendent Rocky Hanna blared financial crisis alarms when balancing its 2025-26 fiscal year budget and warned the district could face the same struggle in the coming months as it awaits funding approvals from the state.
In early December, Hanna and School Board chair Marcus Nicolas said the board would not move forward with discussions about closing neighborhood schools.
“I think school closures are a last option,” Nicolas told the Tallahassee Democrat. “We have not explored all the other opportunities that the superintendent is going to bring us at the retreat and until we explore those opportunities, I think alarming our parents that their schools can be potentially closing is just not a very responsible practice.”
Hanna plans to deliver a menu of programs and positions for the school board to consider for the chopping block at the board’s annual retreat Jan. 26.
But Smith says the issue remains unresolved and she plans to raise it again at the school board’s public business meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 13 at the Aquillina Howell Center.
“One of the concerns that I’ve been hearing is the adverse effect to some of the communities because they view these schools as community schools,” Smith said. “But when you look at the ‘choice out’ numbers, we’re seeing at some of the lower capacity schools, more than 50% of the zoned students are choosing to go to another school.”
Smith said she has heard from families and even district employees who support the measure. But not from any of her colleagues on the board.
LCS isn’t isolated in the potential option of closing schools. The Brevard County School Board is planning to close Cape Canaveral’s only public elementary school that sits at an enrollment of 270 students but has a capacity for 600.
Orange County Public Schools is discussing closing neighborhood schools as the district faces declining enrollments as well.
District data show at least seven schools operating at 70% capacity or lower:
- W.T. Moore Elementary School (59%)
- Hartsfield Elementary School (60%)
- Nims Middle School (62%)
- Oak Ridge Elementary School (64%)
- Cobb Middle School (66%)
- Sealey Elementary School (68%)
- Apalachee Elementary School (70%)
Most of the schools operating below capacity are Title I campuses, where a majority of students come from low-income families. Cobb Middle School and W.T. Moore Elementary are not Title I schools.
Nicolas said closing schools will do more than save money, it would affect the families served by those schools.
“You’re not just talking about closing a school. You’re talking about dislocating families, you’re talking about transportation,” Nicolas said. “It’s a domino effect.”
He added: “It would be really unfortunate and quite frankly irresponsible for us to broach a subject specifically on the record as school closure without actually having a full-fledged comprehensive evaluation of what that actually looks like.”
Alaijah Brown covers children & families for the Tallahassee Democrat. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter/X: @AlaijahBrown3.
