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Updated: Jun 19th, 2005 - 20:05:13 |
SANFORD -- School Board members approved controversial new attendance zones for Seminole County high schools Friday, but parents opposed to the plan have filed a lawsuit they hope will keep their children from having to switch schools.
"We plan to get an injunction to stop it," said Jennifer Finch, a Sabal Point woman leading the drive against the rezoning. "All hope is not lost."
The School Board voted unanimously to implement the rezoning plan, one day after a judge with the state's Division of Administrative Hearings rejected a challenge by Finch and other parents from the Sabal Point and Tuscawilla communities.
As many as 5,000 students at eight high schools could be affected this fall.
A final vote will come after a public hearing April 26.
The emergency approval Friday was aimed at letting the district assign students, craft schedules for students and hire teachers for the start of the new school year in August.
School Board attorney Ned Julian said high-school principals were expected to immediately begin sending letters to parents of affected students telling them their children have been reassigned to a different high school, based on the rezoning.
The process had been delayed for months because of the administrative hearing.
"I don't know how the circuit-court challenge will affect this," Julian said.
School-district officials say the rezoning is necessary to reduce crowding at some schools, fill vacant seats in others and provide students for the new Hagerty High in Oviedo, set to open in August.
Sabal Point parents don't want their children shifted from Lake Brantley High to Lyman High, and Tuscawilla parents oppose a switch from Winter Springs High to Oviedo High.
Parents behind the lawsuit hope Circuit Judge Donna McIntosh, who has been assigned the case, will order a halt to the rezoning based on claims that the School Board repeatedly violated Florida's open-meetings law.
Dennis Wells, an attorney for the Sabal Point parents, and Damon Chase, who represents the Tuscawilla community, pointed to an October bus tour of schools taken by the School Board, meeting notices they contend were faulty and several meetings of a rezoning committee in which the public was not permitted to listen in.
School Board members deny they have broken the law, which requires discussions of School Board business between two or more board members to take place in a public setting.
"We work really hard at being careful that we are always very aware of the 'Sunshine' law," School Board Chairman Jeanne Morris said.
Parents also contend that the board did not follow its own policy for the rezoning process, although the administrative judge already rejected that argument.
Board members said the April 26 hearing will give parents one last opportunity to speak.
Morris said the board's mind is unlikely to be changed by the comments.
Parents said that attitude is what they have complained about throughout the rezoning process.
"If they were really an open board considering the validity of public input, there ought to be some consideration of what we say," said Sherry Durkin, a Sabal Pont parent who wants to keep her daughter at Lake Brantley High.
Seminole County Watch.com
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