By Steve Plunkett
Halfway through the school year, the private Gulf Stream School would get an A for starting a new preschool but a C-minus or lower on its communication skills with town commissioners.
Patrick Donovan, president of the school’s board of trustees, gave commissioners an update on Jan. 12 of the school’s progress since he announced in September that it was buying the Early Childhood Academy in mainland Delray Beach.
“I am pleased to report that the first half of the year has been a resounding success for the school,” Donovan said.
The Gulf Stream School obtained the necessary license and assumed operations of the preschool on Dec. 13, he said. County property records show the school paid the now-shuttered St. Joseph’s Episcopal School $3 million in October for its preschool at 2515 N. Swinton Ave.
Donovan said the school has also launched a “highly successful” in-house lunch program on its main campus and shaved its average pickup time for parents dropping off and retrieving their children from 20 minutes down to 14.
And he expects the line of cars outside to drop once the school starts running a bus between the Gulf Stream and Delray Beach campuses in the morning and afternoon.
“We feel this would be a great service for the Lake Ida-based families. Just an easy drop-off there; they’ll come over. We’d be able to probably reduce the car line by 20, 30 cars maybe,” Donovan said. “A lot of those families come over individually with one child. Putting them on this bus I think will make it a lot easier for them.”
To ease the traffic even more, Mayor Scott Morgan and Town Manager Greg Dunham had news of their own — they’ve been talking with the town’s consulting engineers to widen Gulfstream Road between Lakeview Drive and at least Old School Road from its current 18-foot width to 20 feet wide.
Dunham said that would make it a little easier for southbound cars to navigate past the line. The work would be part of the town’s Capital Improvement Project, which is scheduled to begin in the Core District in March or April.
“That sounds great,” Donovan said. “And if you need us to change our traffic pattern during some of that construction we’d love to work with you on that.”
Dispute on enrollment cap
Then came time for the town commissioners to consider Donovan’s other goal in attending the meeting: endorsing the development agreement between the school and the town that has let the school enroll 300 students, up from a longtime 250 limit.
Morgan was willing to extend the pact until 2027.
“I think a three-year review on the development agreement would be a wise idea,” he said.
Donovan was not pleased and noted that he would probably not be president of the board in three years and that there might be new commissioners by then. He was hoping to have the 300-student limit become permanent and the issue to be resolved.
The school already has agreed to report to the town each October how many students are enrolled, he said.
“We’re going to interject a lot of new parties to this and I believe it adds a little bit of disruption that I would like to avoid for the next president and the next commission,” he said.
But Morgan told him he would not have been at the meeting if the mayor had not inadvertently discovered that parents had already received a document from the school detailing its new plans.
Commissioner Joan Orthwein supported building a better relationship.
“Unless the mayor had reached out to you, nobody would ever come back with your plan so I think that is my problem, right?” she said. “Because you said you were going to come back. That’s how we left it with you, the commission, and I just think nobody ever came back.”
In the end commissioners approved extending the agreement for the three years.
Before the meeting began, new Commissioner Robert Canfield took his oath of office.
Donovan said the Early Childhood Academy, renamed the Gulf Stream School Delray Beach Academy, will cater to children between 1 and 3 years old and offer a full-time preschool program from 7:45 a.m. to 4 p.m. The 4-year-olds will remain on the Gulf Stream campus.
The Gulf Stream School had 293 students in 2022-2023 despite enrollment being capped at 250. This year its enrollment is 294.
Commissioners amended the agreement in January 2023 to raise the cap to 300 children after Dr. Gray Smith, the head of school, told them having more students gives the school a “modest” budget surplus instead of a deficit.
Commissioners were going to vote later on making the higher limit permanent but after hearing in September about the Delray Beach preschool purchase decided to wait at least 90 days so Donovan and Smith could develop and share with them more specific plans.
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