Palm Beach County opens 180th school

Blue Lake Elementary School is located on Military Trail across from Lynn University and next to Don Estridge High Tech Middle School.

It is the first new school to open since Everglades Elementary opened its doors in West Palm Beach in 2010.

Palm Beach County’s newest public school ready to welcome students on Wednesday

The school was built on 15 acres of land donated by the city of Boca Raton. Mayor Scott Singer says he saw an opportunity, and ran with it. The nearly 700 students who will walk through the doors on the first day of school are primarily coming from Calusa Elementary School, Verde K-8 School and J.C. Mitchell Elementary School.

“We got the new public school because of hustle. We saw there was money in the school district budget, but no land located for it and that’s what I approached (school board) Chair Barbieri. If we give you the land will you give us the school? And that set up the year-long process to get the school approval leading up to all of the construction until today,” Singer says.

Fifth grade students now zoned for Blue Lake Elementary had the option to stay at their previous school for their final year. There are only two classrooms of fifth graders for this first year at Blue Lake, leaving room to grow. The school has space for close to one thousand students.

Classrooms are full of technology, like flat panel screens, and the school has a gifted program. It stands three stories tall with a state-of-the-art media center filled with $150,000 worth of library books.