To the Editor,
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the plan for the new Belleview Elementary, and maybe somebody smarter than me can explain it.
We’re going to spend about a million dollars preparing a temporary campus, moving students, moving teachers, moving equipment, changing bus routes, and sending everyone to the old Lake Weir Middle School for a year.
Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to buy another piece of property and build the new school there in the first place?
I’m asking honestly. From an Ivory Tower in Ocala, this may have looked like a good idea.
Instead, we’re paying to move an entire school so we can tear the old one down and build another one in the exact same spot. More students. More traffic. Same bad location.
Whoever signed off on this should have to sit at Belleview Elementary during morning drop-off and afternoon pickup before they’re allowed to vote.
Has anybody making these decisions actually done that?
Because if they really have, building an even bigger school at that location seems like an insane conclusion. Belleview Elementary absolutely needs replacing. Nobody’s arguing that. But when they built that school in the early 1960s, 484 wasn’t the traffic circus it is today. A few decades and a handful of 400-home subdivisions later, it’s a completely different Belleview.
Truth be told, the whole pickup situation would’ve collapsed years ago if Belleview United Methodist Church hadn’t let parents park on its property and walk across the street. The School Board owes that church a debt of gratitude whether they realize it or not. So naturally, their plan is to squeeze two elementary schools onto the same campus. It’s hard not to wonder if the folks making these decisions have ever driven through Belleview at 7:30 on a weekday, or if they only know 484 from a map projected onto a conference room wall.
We’re told combining Belleview Elementary and Belleview-Santos Elementary is more efficient. Efficient for who? It may look great on a spreadsheet, but it also means more students, more parents, more buses and more traffic at a traffic location that can’t keep up.
The planning documents proudly point out that the new Belleview Elementary will be a reuse of the same prototype built at Ross Prairie and Winding Oaks. Maybe that’s efficient. Maybe it’s cost-effective. Or maybe it is a quick cash-grab for a builder. Belleview isn’t Ross Prairie, and it isn’t Winding Oaks. Belleview has its own traffic patterns and its own growth.
The people making these decisions keep talking about what’s best for the district.
I’d like to hear a little more about what’s best for Belleview.
Nobody is against a new school. The current one has served generations and it’s time for an upgrade.
What people are questioning is the plan. Maybe there’s a reason this is the best option. If there is, somebody ought to explain it a little better. Because from where I’m sitting, we’re spending millions to create a new problem before we solve an old one.
– A Concerned Belleview Parent
