On Tuesday, the superintendent updated board members on $40 million plans for Booker Elementary and Middle, and more.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: January 7, 2026
Host: The makeover of Sarasota’s public schools has taken on a dynamic of its own, a dynamic that’s going way beyond countering a challenge by for-profit operators asking to move into underused school buildings. Since November, at a dizzying speed—and to the applause of parents and all school board members—the superintendent has been changing the makeup of elementary and middle schools in the county to counter declining enrollment. Yesterday, Terry Connor updated school board members about his “Future Focused Initiative.”
Terry Connor
Terry Connor: A lot has been accomplished in 26 days since we approved the plan.
Johannes Werner: That’s Superintendent Connor at the monthly board work session yesterday, after summarizing what he and his staff have done since November.
It’s a new world out there in Sarasota public schools, breaking existing molds. At the meeting, a conservative school board member expressed concern over how the district will accommodate special-needs students in its new programs. Meanwhile, a liberal board member elaborated on the benefits of a “customer service” approach. Marketing seems to be turning into a serious tool used by administrators. Beginning over the next two months, the district will bombard parents and students with TV and social media ads to make them aware of new programs.
Sarasota parents will have plenty of new options come February, when the school choice window opens. In just 26 school days, the school district staff has set in motion more than a dozen projects. These projects are shifting the makeup not just of individual schools that have seen dropping enrollment but of the entire school district.
Here are some of the main takeaways from Terry Connor’s presentation at yesterday’s school board work session.
The biggest-ticket item, by far, are the “Discovery Centers” a national non-profit organization wants to build at Emma E. Booker Elementary and Booker Middle School in Newtown. The program is designed to make students financially literate and teach entrepreneurship. Junior Achievement believes it will have to raise $40 million for the program and building renovations, and the fundraising—some of it from corporate sponsors—will begin now. The district will participate in these private fundraising efforts.
TC: Accomplish this vision of creating these Discovery Centers in the Newtown area, which I think would be a phenomenal asset for not only Newtown but the entire county. That is about a $40 million price tag if we go all in. We would phase that. We would start with Emma E. Booker, look at that first, get that experience up and going and then continue building towards funding for the finance park at Booker Middle School.
JW: Connor also wants to locate two daycare centers at its schools, one at Booker Elementary on the north side of the county and one at Heron Creek Middle in North Port on the south side. Both are still moving targets. Administrators are negotiating with the YMCA to operate the daycare at Booker and with Sarasota Memorial Hospital at Heron Creek.
The expansion of four under-enrolled neighborhood elementary schools to become combined elementary and middle schools has already begun. Supported by a marketing campaign, Alta Vista, Wilkinson, Gulf Gate and Brentwood are adding sixth grades for the next school year and will gradually expand to eighth grade.
Also, a children’s museum wants to open in Building 2 at Wilkinson Elementary.
Brookside Middle School will change its name—which will be decided in surveys. It will become a magnet school for artificial intelligence, gaming, and other technologies. The district is shaping a curriculum with the University of South Florida.
Finally, the district is in talks with charter school Dreamers Academy to build a dual language program for the entire school district.
According to Connor, all this is not going to add much cost for the district. The Discovery Centers aside, the price tag for all this is $5 million. $4 million of this—including close to $1 million for tearing down two aging buildings—will come from the capital fund rather than the general fund. In terms of personnel cost, he said that—if the effort does not result in rising student numbers—existing teachers will follow students.
Connor wants ‘fiercer’ and more contemporary logos.
TC: We can be strategic in how we plan for that. We do that every day. As we have change orders and money comes back from different projects, we can be strategic and bring back some revisions to the board about how to allocate our capital funding to accomplish these goals. And we don’t have to do everything all at once. We can phase this in this year, next year and even out three years to get some of this done.
In terms of general fund impact, it’s going to be very minimal. The main thing always comes with staffing when you roll up to sixth grade. But here’s the deal: Either you’re going to generate more students that generates the funding for new teachers, or you’re going to be moving students from one school to the next, which means the staffing follows that pretty closely.
JW: On March 3, Connor will give the board the next update on the fast-evolving programs.
Asked by board member Tom Edwards about when the district will know whether the effort produces enrollment growth, Connor said the district will be able to tell by fall.
Reporting for WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
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