$405 Million for 2 New Schools by 2033? Not If Flagler District’s Enrollment Continues to Flatline

Since 2007, enrollment in Flagler County’s nine traditional, brick and mortar schools has barely budged even as the county’s population has surged. Enrollment in those schools was 12,580 in 2007. At last count this year, it is 12,478–a slight decline both from 2007 and from the end of last school year, when enrollment rose a bit.

The district is artificially bulking up its enrollment numbers by including its iFlagler, or virtual, students, which adds 177 students, by including VPK, which adds 277 students, and by including the nearly 900 students who attend Imagine School at Town center, the district’s only charter school–a privately run but publicly funded school. That brings the total number of students to 13,829.




But 1,351 of those students–the equivalent of an entire middle school–do not attend the district’s own brick-and-mortar schools.

Despite those figures, the district is projecting the need for a new middle school to be designed in 2029, for between 1,800 and to 2,000 students, and a new high school to be designed and built sometime between 2029 and 2033, for 2,400 to 2,600. The projected cost for the middle school would be $175 million, for the high school, $230 million. That’s on the assumption that district enrollment will have grown by a third by then.

District staff has no illusions: it includes the future schools on its list of long-term projects only as potential needs, not as certainties. “Of course, based on our enrollment, what our numbers are, that will either slide to the right or slide to left,” Kory Bush, the district’s director of plant services, told the Flagler County School Board at a workshop last Tuesday, meaning that the projected date of design and construction would either be pushed out (to the right) or moved up (to the left). Almost every year, the projection has been pushed back.

Still, Bush said the projection for design and construction in the 2029-33 period is based on October enrollment numbers, though those numbers don’t suggest enrollment is at a pace that would justify the projections.




An impact fee analysis a private consultant conducted for the district in 2021 by TischlerBise, the consultant local governments frequently use to set their development impact fees (the one-time fee builders and developers pay to cost of “impact” of new residents on schools, roads, parks and so on), projected an enrollment of 13,252 by 2025, and 14,345 by 2030. (See the projections here.) The projection was very close to the mark.

But it did not account for students attending virtually. It had accounted for the proportion of students attending private school or being homeschooled. But that was before a new law eliminated barriers on school vouchers. The new law opened the way for any student from any family, regardless of income, to be eligible for up to $8,000 in subsidies either to attend private school or be homeschooled. That’s what accounts for the major difference between the consultant’s enrollment projections and the reality the district faces.

Last year, $10 million in state education dollars that would have otherwise gone to the school district were redirected as private-schooling subsidies. The number of students who received those subsidies in Flagler County surged to 1,250, from just 136 in 2021. The number is expected to keep increasing. (See: “How Flagler Schools’ ‘Truth in Millage’ Budget Hid $10 Million Going to Private and Home School Tuition” and “Flagler Schools’ Budget Is Millions Short from 10 Years Ago as District Is Forced to Shift Tax Dollars to Private Schools.”)




The district’s own documentation shows that under its so-called “Capital Outlay Full-Time Equivalent Enrollment” of students (meaning students who use brick-and-mortar schools), enrollment this year is at 12,243, with a projection of 12,715 by 2029–still not the sort of numbers that would call for a new middle school, let alone a new middle school or a high school.  In fact, in the district’s projections, capacity would be only 81 percent last year, and would be at 85 percent by the end of the decade even with today’s buildings. (See those district projections here.)

The district ended last school year with Buddy Taylor Middle School at just 71 percent capacity, Old Kings Elementary at 77 percent, and Rymfire at 66 percent. Only Flagler Palm Coast High School and Indian Trails Middle School were at over 90 percent capacity.

Actual enrollment figures, based on the district’s own week-by-week tallies, tell the tale. In 2015, Belle Terre Elementary School had 1,073 students, even when sixth graders were excluded (since 6th grade was moved to middle school a few years ago). This month, enrollment was 1,090. At Rymfire, enrollment was 960 in 2015 (without 6th grade). This month: 969. At Wadsworth Elementary, it went from 789 to 798.

If 6th graders were excluded from middle schools, Indian Trails and Buddy Taylor would have lost enrollment, compared to 2015: The two schools combined for 1,959 students in 7th and 8th grade in 2015. This month, the two schools combined for 1,803 students in those two grades, an 8 percent decline.




Flagler Palm Coast High School and Matanzas High School have gained students since 2015, going from 4,074 to 4,600, with most of that increase accounted for by the new addition at Matanzas High School.

“We’re constantly reviewing the numbers, reviewing capacity for all of our all of our schools,” Superintendent LaShakia Moore said. “Another thing that may have to come before this board again, which was not a popular conversation in the past, is to adjust the attendance zones and rezone the district in order to level out elementary specifically.” She mentioned Belle Terre, Old Kings and Wadsworth as schools that have accommodated more students in the past. “It’s definitely tight at some schools, but not tight enough for us to say that we need to build an elementary school,” she said, noting that rezoning is a different matter.