The Palm Beach County School Board picked design and preconstruction services teams to handle the building of a new elementary school in Westlake, the county’s newest and fastest-growing city.
It would be the second new elementary school in three years to open ahead of schedule because of explosive growth in the western area of the county.
Zyscovich LLC and Moss & Associates, the same firms that oversaw the design and construction of the new Saddle View Elementary near Arden, will handle design services and preconstruction services, respectively. The design services contract is $1.96 million, and the preconstruction contract is $275,280.
The new school is estimated to cost $42.9 million and is expected to open in August 2027.
Westlake was founded in 2016 and by 2024, had a population approaching 7,000 residents. The city’s population could reach 9,300 by the end of this year.
‘Rapid growth in the city of Westlake’
“We’re really excited about this new elementary school, and we’re moving it up in the capital plan because of rapid growth in the city of Westlake,” Superintendent Mike Burke said during the school board’s Aug. 20 meeting.
Like Saddle View, the new school at Westlake will be a multistory facility built to accommodate 970 students.
School board members unanimously approved the selection of Zyscovich and Moss & Associates on Aug. 20 but not before one member, Virginia Savietto, raised concerns about traffic.
Traffic concerns raised
Savietto noted a recent decision by Palm Beach County to spend $29,200 for curbing along 47th Place South in areas between Lyons Road and Polo Road near Dr. Joaquin Garcia High, which opened in the Lake Worth Beach area in 2023.
“Residents from the Andalucía Development, along the north side of 47th Place South, across from Dr. Joaquin Garcia High School, have raised concerns about the traffic created by the newly built school,” county staff wrote in describing the need for the curbing, which is expected to “help prevent school-related traffic from damaging landscaping on privately owned lands adjacent to the county’s right-of-way on 47th Place South.”
Savietto, who works as an assistant chief of staff to County Commissioner Gregg Weiss, raised the need for curbing near the new high school as a failure to anticipate fully the traffic problems caused by it.
“As we move forward with building new schools like this one, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to look beyond the walls of the campus,” Savietto told her colleagues. “The design phase is not just about classrooms and parking space.”
She added: “When parent traffic patterns, parking and neighborhood impacts aren’t fully considered during the design phase, it creates real challenges. Families look for shortcuts. Cars end up on lawns. Driveways are blocked. Now, Palm Beach County has to spend almost $30,000 just to install curbing after the fact. County commissioners are, understandably, asking why they’re paying for something that should have been addressed from the start.”
Savietto’s call for more coordination between the school district and county staffs as new schools are contemplated and designed irked some of her colleagues on the board.
“There definitely is coordination,” board member Gloria Branch said. “There’s no way anyone can foresee everything.”
Board member Marcia Andrews, whose district includes Garcia High, also said there was ample coordination before the school was built.
“Things happen after the fact as we work through the process, but I think our team here and operations under Mr. (Joseph) Sanches do a great job in building the schools and getting input from every stakeholder that would be a part of that new school,” she said.
As her colleagues detailed the coordination that typically takes place before a new school is built, Savietto said her argument isn’t that the district does a poor job at coordination but that it could do a better job at it.
“We’ll be sensitive to the concerns you raised,” Burke told Savietto, “but I’m confident that (the new school at Westlake) will be a great addition to the community, just like Saddle View was to the Arden community.”
Wayne Washington is a journalist covering education for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at wwashington@pbpost.com. Help support our work; subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Another new elementary school moves ahead in Westlake to handle explosive growth
Reporting by Wayne Washington, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
