PANAMA CITY BEACH — The Beach is booming.
Bed tax collections and sales tax revenue show visitors are returning to Panama City Beach in record numbers.
But as the Beach recovers from the Great Recession and Deepwater Horizon oil spill, it’s not just visitors who are contributing to the Beach economy. More full-time residents are moving their families over the Hathway Bridge, eating at restaurants and shopping in stores.
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According to Census data, in Panama City Beach the count for people ages 18 to 64 years old in 2010 was 7,988 individuals. In 2000 the count was 5,167 individuals. That was an additional 2,821 people in that decade.
And they’re going to Beach schools.
That has resulted in overcrowding at two Beach elementary schools, with no end to the trend in sight.
Steve Moss, Bay District School Board chairman, said there are now plenty of affordable condos, apartments and single-family homes on the Beach. He said the board saw the growth, but enrollment accelerated faster than they thought it would. Moss drew a contrast with schools in Panama City, which he said have “plateaued.”
Mainland schools such as Cedar Grove Elementary and Jinks Middle are not at a risk for tipping over the enrollment limit set by the School Board, according to 2014-2015 school enrollment data.
Bay District School Board members recently considered solutions to increasing enrollment, especially at Breakfast Point Academy and Patronis Elementary. What they approved as a short-term solution was to reopen West Bay, which was closed in 2009 because too few students were enrolled there. But a long-term solution may be more complicated.
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Four long-term solutions are being considered:
- Build new elementary school adjacent to Surfside that would hold 600 students. Surfside would become a K-8 school with the 600-student elementary school.
- Build a middle school addition at Surfside. Breakfast Point would become a K-5 school.
- Build a K-5 Beach school at a currently undecided location. The new K-5 school would expand to a K-8 school at some point in the future as needed.
- Redraw attendance zones countywide, shifting the Beach student population to the east at existing available classroom spaces.
Lunch at 10:10 in Patronis: Overcrowding is visible at Beach schools. At Patronis Elementary by 1:30 p.m. on a recent school day, cars were already in a line in front of the school waiting for the 2 p.m. bell.
Acting Principal Brooke Loyed said she has seen the Beach grow, which puts a strain on school infrastructure and the playground and made the school traffic rough. The line goes down the street sometimes, and to have time to serve all the students, lunch started at 10:10 a.m. and ended a half-hour after noon most days, Loyed said. There were nine kindergarten classes, with 18 students a class.
When Loyed started, she said, Patronis was pre-K to fifth grade. Now, pre-K has moved to Arnold High, which Loyed said helped Patronis.
She knows rezoning is an option on the table and worries what that could do to Patronis, which she considers a neighborhood school.
“We like that tradition and sense of community,” Loyed said.
Rezoning likely: But rezoning is probable, Moss said.
Issues in District 5, the Beach district, hit close to home for Moss. Not only is it his district as a School Board member, but he also has two kids attending these schools.
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Moss said though people don’t like to hear the “r” word, it will come up.
“Rezoning the Beach is going to be a foregone conclusion,” Moss said.
It has been several years since the district has undergone rezoning, Moss said. While many students and parents don’t like rezoning, Moss said, the district must be efficient with space.
Bay District Schools Director of Facilities John Bozarth is a key figure for the district in solving the problem. Spread out on his desk recently were several pages of slides from a presentation about Beach school overcrowding.
While there is classroom space in Panama City, the Beach has very little room for growth, Bozarth said. For the elementary students, where a lot of overcrowding was concentrated, they will get older, and that means moving into middle and high school.
“It’s a trend that’s coming my way,” Bozarth said.
Going over enrollment figures, Bozarth said it was a fairly consistent trend and a recent one as well. The growth in enrollment was traced back to 2009, Bozarth said.
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Bozarth said rezoning is a logical option. People never want to go from west to east when the topic of students possibly coming into Panama City from the Beach came up. Parents don’t like the drive time, he said.
Permanent facility expansion is on the horizon, he said. The lead time for that is three years. Infrastructure and schools will be built, Bozarth said. The two concerns for Bozarth were getting something going and doing it in a cost-efficient way, he said.
Line of cars at Breakfast Point: At Breakfast Point Academy, as with Patronis, there was already a line of cars at the school by 7:40 a.m. one day recently. A police officer directed traffic coming in and out of campus. The parking lot, with scant few spaces open, had signs saying to not park on the grass.
Principal Keri Weatherly said the school has new students enrolling and that the academy has been creative in handling the issue. Increasing enrollment created challenges in the lunch room and parking lot, said Weatherly. According to Weatherly, the school was using every room and resource available, with 11 portable classrooms moved in behind the gym.
Current enrollment, Weatherly said, is at 1,460, which was the enrollment number for the previous year. Last year was also the first year Breakfast Point added eighth grade, Weatherly said.
Weatherly joined the chorus in reflecting on how the Beach factored into growing student populations — the Beach community itself is expanding, Weatherly said.
“We continue to grow,” Weatherly said.
Weatherly noted houses were built in the Breakfast Point neighborhood. Though there is a large student population, Weatherly said the school has a family feel.
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“We love our kids,” Weatherly said.
Weatherly said she wasn’t sure if there was a perfect solution to school overcrowding. Regardless of the solution, for Weatherly the general theme comes back to the kids and the connection educators have with the students, a connection she sounds optimistic about.
“We know our parents and kids,” Weatherly said.