The Petition
Dear Heathrow Community Residents,
We need your strong support to keep the
Heathrow resident children in one public school zone. Please sign this petition
if you are in favor of keeping the rights for all Heathrow children attending HEATHROW ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.
Bottom line: We do not welcome the SCPS
rezone plan 748 (or any other plan) which proposes to move 28 students who are
living within the Heathrow gates to another school zone.
THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!
Below is the letter sent by Ed Holt, President of Heathrow Master Association, on January 17, 2013.
“Thank you for your support. Many of you
have begun communicating with the School Board in support of keeping Heathrow
as a unified community. In addition, several of you have asked me for
some talking points which you could include in your e-mails in using a cut and
paste method to create your own personal e-mail. We believe that unique
personal messages are more effective than a bunch of copies of the same
letter. The following are some points that you may choose to include:
Heathrow was created as a single unified community with the original Planned
Development approved in August 1974. The developer committed 45 acres for
a future site for an elementary school and a middle school to serve the
residents of the Heathrow and the adjacent residential areas. The gift of
the land was made in 1989, permitting the construction of Heathrow Elementary
School. In addition to donating the school site, the developer also built
Lake Mary Boulevard from I-4 to Markham Woods Road and Heathrow still maintains
the landscaping on both sides and in the median of this major road.
Heathrow is a community of 1963 homes located in unincorporated Seminole
County. It is like a small city fully responsible for maintaining our own
streets, streetlights, lakes, landscaping and storm water. The community
is physically designed with 28 Neighborhoods all off of the major entry and
exit street – Heathrow Boulevard. However we operate as a single unified
community led by the Heathrow Master Association Board of Directors.
Heathrow residents purchased their homes with a reasonable assumption that
their children would be attending Heathrow Elementary School and Markham Woods Middle
School. Parents are active volunteers in the school education and support
process and work together from all residential areas in our Community.
In the High School rezoning process a few years ago there were some plan
considerations that would have split Heathrow between Seminole HS and Lake Mary
HS. Our Board of Directors requested the School Board to keep Heathrow as
a community in one HS and we were zoned for Seminole HS, which has been great
with the steady improvements to both the facility and the educational
opportunities provided there. Now we are again requesting that we stay as
one community at the elementary school level.
The School Board has two other plans in the final four under current
consideration that keep Heathrow unified (Plans 267 – Rezone Plan and Plan 756
– North Phase Z1). On utilization of capacity, plan 756 meets the school
board targets in 9 out of 11 schools while both 267 and 748 only meet the
targets in 4 schools. All three plans are very similar in their
achievement of targets on free and reduced lunch but only plans 756 and 267
make progress in increasing that in Heathrow Elementary. Plan 748 makes
it worse. All three plans are making progress towards decreasing the FRL
levels in the 3 schools with the highest current levels.
Bottom line: Plans 267 and 756 are acceptable to the residents of
Heathrow, plan 748 can be modified to become acceptable by either moving the
cell 82 back to Heathrow Elementary or splitting the cell and moving the 28
students in Heathrow to a new cell zoned for Heathrow Elementary.
The School Board work session on the North Phase is 1/23/13 at 6PM in the
School Board room. We strongly urge you to immediately contact our School
Board representatives, Walt Griffin – District Superintendent at walt_griffin@scps.k12.fl.us
and Tina Calderone – our District 5 School Board Member atTina_Calderone@scps.k12.fl.us
and clearly make your objections to the plan splitting Heathrow. For more
information, contact Blaine Darrah at bdarrah3@gmail.com”