School Bids Farewell to Mobile Classrooms

The dream to expand may have taken a decade of scrimping, but the little charter-school-that-could finally made it happen.

Students and teachers will leave behind its modest mobile class units, when Principal Susan Ray opens the doors to a new, custom-outfitted and expanded Keene Road location on the first day of school Aug. 20. 

"It's been a long time coming," Ray said.

At a time when Pinellas County Schools is cutting back, Academie Da Vinci is doubling in size and space. It's going from 116 students to 232, from six teachers to 12 (not counting the arts education teachers, who move to full-time), and from six mobile units to 16 traditional classrooms. Each room will also be equipped with a wireless connection, an IP phone and intercom system and new computers (leased).

"It’s where everybody should be technologically. We’re finally getting there," Ray said.

And they did it all by being penny wise, Ray said. When the previous principal Dawn Wilson set the school expansion dream in motion eight to 10 years ago, they started cutting "things like utilities," Ray said. "Something as simple as making sure the lights are off."

Ray said at the time, the school, which operates within the public school system, was breaking even with the $5,300 to $5,800 in state funding it receives for each student annually.  

"We did it by not spending frivolously," she said. "And we did it all without denying the children anything they needed."

She said the school also delayed major purchases for things like computer equipment and saved on inexpensive lease agreements for their facilities.

Academie Da Vinci's nine-member board, which includes County Commissioner Susan Latvala, negotiated everything with the new site, Ray said.

The quaint school has operated out of a cluster of mobile units on Pinehurst Road near San Christopher Drive since it opened as the first charter school in Pinellas County with 40 students in 1997. It started as a place primarily for teaching arts education to home school students, and only opened to full-time students in 2004. Academie Da Vinci is one of .

Ray said last week that Academie Da Vinci has 47 student slots open in second, fourth and fifth grades. 

To register, call the school at 727-298-2778, email the principal at c.rays@pcsb.org, or visit the website at www.academiedavinci.org.