Home / Education / School Board Explores Options For Empty Waldo School Building
School Board Explores Ways for Empty Waldo School Building
By WUFT News
June 7, 2017 Education
Waldo residents and town officials presented their hopes for the abandoned building that after housed the Waldo Community School towards Alachua County School Board Tuesday evening.
Residents have?brainstormed functions for the empty building maybe a City Hall, health clinic, community theater and dance center, or maybe a charter school.
“I’d like to see it just become another community center where we could an establishment to have kids here we are at so as to get some variety of relationship with ?Waldo,” said Dudley Wade, a Waldo resident. “We sort of lost that after we lost the varsity.”
The school was closed as soon as the 2014-2015 school year, due to declining attendance based on Alachua County Public Schools spokeswoman Jackie Johnson.
“Essentially what you had was really a falling student population as soon as you reach a certain point simply can’t offer a excellent education if you have very few students,” Johnson said. “So at that point the district thought to close Waldo School and send the rest of the students to Shell Elementary School.”
Board members seemed open to the thinking behind giving the home and property returning to town at Tuesday’s meeting, with School Board Chair Rob Hyatt acknowledgeing the proposals “looks to become win-win.”
The next meeting where the School Board could discuss not able to the faculty is July 18.
