Students Implore Board to Keep School The Marine Science Education Center in Mayport Was Being Considered for Closing.

By MAGGIE FITZROY

Nick Wade, 16, was repeating seventh grade last year in a middle school in Jacksonville.

“I fell behind in school really bad, couldn’t focus on my work,” said Wade, now a junior at the Marine Science Education Center in Mayport, which serves teens who have become discouraged with school or who have dropped out.

“I used to hate school, but now I wake up and say to myself, ‘Oooo time for school,’ ” Wade wrote in an e-mail this week to Duval County School Board members. “I look forward to it for the first time in my life.”

Wade and many of the school’s current and former students contacted School Board members this week to protest the possible closing of the center as a cost-cutting measure due to a budget shortfall.

For now, at least, they have succeeded. School Board member Vicki Drake, whose district includes the Mayport school, said she is “vehemently opposed” to its closing. On Wednesday, she and other board members directed Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals to restore funding.

The high school program serves 40 to 50 high school students a year from around Jacksonville through an academic and vocational training commercial fishing program.

The center also serves as an all-day biology and ecology field trip destination for all of Jacksonville’s fifth-graders. Every year, about 10,000 fifth-graders go there to study live animals in the center’s tanks, and then visit a beach in nearby Hanna Park for an eco tour.

What they learn there helps them prepare for the science portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, Drake said. For many students in some parts of Jacksonville, the trip to the center “is the first time they ever saw the ocean.”

Drake said most of the high school students enrolled there would not graduate if not for the program.

The program is designed so teachers can work with students one- on-one on an academic and vocational training schedule that meets their needs.

Many go to college after they graduate, or join the military. And some stop by the school to visit staff when they are in town because they credit the school with helping them achieve goals they never would have imagined if it were not for the center’s small family- like atmosphere.

Drake said the school system must cut $75 million from its budget. Operating the center costs about $600,000 a year, though closing it would save the school system only about $207,000.

Budget talks are ongoing, and the school system will not finalize its 2008-09 spending until September. For now, however, the program is safe.

“Their system worked,” Trevor Ramey, 22, of Atlantic Beach, said Monday when the 2003 graduate came to say hello during a leave from Afghanistan, where he is serving as a medic in the U.S. Army.

He’d repeated eighth grade twice and dropped out of school before going to the marine center.

He said he plans to continue his medical career by earning a college degree and sets his sights on becoming a physician’s assistant.

Brooke Randle, 19, of Jacksonville, a 2007 graduate, attends Florida Community College at Jacksonville. During a visit Tuesday, she told teachers she wants to be a high school literature teacher.

A straight-A student before dropping out of a high school where she said, “teachers were more concerned with discipline than anything else,” she blossomed once again when she entered the marine school.

School administrator Ron Summers and teachers Nathan Shoemaker and Tim Carney “completely accept you,” she said. “The past does not matter. Their attitude is, ‘We will fix it now, make it better, and move on.’ “

Parents and grandparents have also sent e-mails to School Board members.

“It is with a feeling of anguish that I write to you. It would be a travesty if this program was eliminated,” Peter Matarazzo, “a grateful grandfather,” wrote to Pratt-Dannals.

“When I was 16, I had a lot of issues in my life,” wrote Nina Marie Massey.

“I graduated from Marine Science Center with the most positive attitude and greatest outlook on life. I will always be touched by the school and hope other students enjoy it as much as I did,” she wrote.

Drake said other potential cuts include eliminating some Exceptional Student Education support program positions and a rapid- dial emergency phone system.

Drake suggests that since it costs about $600,000 a week to fund the School Board offices in Jacksonville, they should close the week of July Fourth to save money because many staff members take their vacation then anyway.Maggie FitzRoy can also be reached at (904) 249- 4947, ext. 6320.

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