09-04-2025
Pasco school district pulls plug on dedicated early learning center
The Pasco County school district's first dedicated early learning center will shut its doors after just two years of operation.
Mittye P. Locke Early Learning Academy opened in 2023 in New Port Richey with anticipation high that families would flock there for prekindergarten and other programs. The district spent $2 million converting the former elementary school into a 10-classroom center aimed at providing services that were in short supply in the west Pasco community.
Things did not turn out as hoped, though.
Enrollment in the Voluntary Prekindergarten, Head Start and special education early learning classes started at 106 children, below expectations, shrinking to 82 this year.
Only three families have applied to place their 4-year-olds in the site's Voluntary Prekindergarten program for the fall, superintendent John Legg said. The school's programs are losing about $1.5 million annually, he added.
'The model is well intended,' Legg said. 'But parents want programs at the school sites with their other children.'
To that end, the district is preparing to place prekindergarten programs at some of the westside elementary schools that have available space. Among the area campuses with capacity are Deer Park, Cotee River, Sunray, Marlowe and Seven Springs elementary.
Teams of teachers and administrators are reviewing the schools to determine where adding prekindergarten makes most sense, taking into account criteria such as demand and kindergarten readiness data, deputy superintendent Betsy Kuhn said.
The district also plans to relocate its Head Start classes from Locke to a new Metropolitan Ministries center in Holiday. The program has had a waiting list of children, and the district did not receive a federal grant that it sought to expand the program.
District teachers will continue to lead Head Start classrooms.
To replace the early learning programs, the district will move its alternative Achieve Academy, currently housed at Richey Elementary, over to the Locke campus. It additionally will develop for Locke a transition program for over-age fourth and fifth graders who have had behavior problems at their home schools.
That move will allow Richey, which has been among the district's lowest scoring schools on state testing, to have space for additional services in support of its improvement efforts.
Because the changes are programmatic, the school board will not vote on them. On Tuesday, it will hold a workshop on the plan, and also decide whether to rename the early learning site as Mittye P. Locke Achievement Academy, reflecting its new mission.
School board chairperson Cynthia Armstrong had predicted that the district would have little trouble filling the early learning center. She said she was disappointed the numbers didn't materialize, but acknowledged that families like to keep their young children together for a variety of reasons, including ease of transporting them.
'If something is not working, even if it's something we thought would work, it might be time to try something different,' Armstrong said.
The dearth of other early learning services remains in parts of west Pasco, she said, and the district needs to reach more children to help them prepare before kindergarten.
'We want our kids to have early literacy exposure,' said board member Megan Harding. 'We'll still be seeing our kids.'
Principal Jomary Schulz, who helped open the early learning center, took to Facebook to say what an honor it was to lead the school.
'This has been super sad for all of us at my school, but all of my staff are guaranteed positions for next year and I too will be placed somewhere,' she wrote. 'Relationships have been built and we will stay strong through this transition!'
