BoardBegins School
Walk-Through Tours
By MARC VALERO

SEBRING — Walking the halls and checking the principals’ needs lists, School Board of Highlands County members and school officials began their annual walk-through tours Friday of the district’s schools.

School security concerns prompted Fred Wild Elementary Principal Ruby Handley to suggest converting a classroom into a visitors/parent check-in area.

The parking lot at the front of the school is used by staff with a limited number of open spaces for visitors. Parents and visitors often park at the school’s other lot to the south of the school, which is located some distance from the main office.

“As the kindergarten center becomes effective we would like to open a parent/visitor check-in area,” Handley said. With the kindergarten classes vacating the 400 building – to be located next year at the new kindergarten center – Handley proposes using Room 405 as the check-in area. The classroom, at the corner of the building, is located close to the parking lot.

The primary purpose is to close those front gates at 7:20 p.m. and then the only gate that would be open would be to the south driveway, she said. The front driveway is used by the school buses and the back driveway is used for parent pickup and drop off.

If the front parking lot were to be converted to a parent/visitor parking lot then parents would want to pickup and drop off there children there, Handley said. “I’m trying to separate the parent pickup and those buses as best I can and keep us safe.”

Handley also requested tile to replace the carpeting in the 400 building’s classrooms.

The carpet that is in there is the orange nappy, nasty stuff that was there in the 1970s, she said.

Also, some of the whiteboards in the portable classrooms are buckling with peeling finishes, Handley said.

The school board on Friday also toured Hill-Gustat and Sebring Middle schools and Woodlawn and Cracker Trail elementary schools.

The board is scheduled to tour Lake Country and Lake Placid elementary schools, Lake Placid Middle and Sebring and Lake Placid high schools on Feb. 8.

The board is scheduled to tour Sun ‘N Lake, Avon and Park elementary schools, Avon Park Middle and Avon Park High schools on Feb. 9.