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Pinecrest Academy breaks ground on K-8 in Tavares
Pinecrest Academy officials joined with city councilors and developers Thursday morning for a groundbreaking ceremony on an upcoming Tavares K-8 charter school.
The school, which will be aptly named Pinecrest Academy Tavares and located at 2550 Huffstetler Drive, was already well under construction Thursday. Construction crews were actively working on the structure that officials said will become a full-fledged school in time for the 2020-21 school year.
“I’ve seen the full specs but to actually see it going up is amazing,” the school’s principal, Rebecca Schanck, said. “It’s exciting to see the pieces come together.”
Schanck has served as the assistant principal at Pinecrest Lakes Academy in Minneola since it’s founding three years earlier.
Prior to that, she worked as a teacher in Orange County, a reading coach in Lake, and she ran an education consulting company for 10 years.
She’s lived in the area for about 15 years and has been with Pinecrest since their move into Lake County in 2017. She said when the time came that Pinecrest wanted to expand into the north side of the county, she came up as a natural choice.
She’s currently finishing out her last school year as assistant principal at Pinecrest Lakes, which includes preparing that school for its own expansion as it seeks to open a ninth grade class and start a high school.
Pinecrest Academy Tavares will open first with a kindergarten through sixth grade class, at a projection of roughly 425 students, according to Schanck. They’ll look to expand to 600 in the next few years, and are aiming to support up to 900 at the end of a 5 year period.
The school’s construction is being handled by a company called Avalon Park Group, which developed communities like Avalon Park in Orlando and is looking to create Avalon Park Tavares.
The goal of their communities, according to their Senior Vice President of Marketing and Community Relations Stephanie Lerret, is to create a walkable, self-sustaining neighborhood that allows residents to get as many services and goods as possible without needing to travel too far from home. That includes things like doctor’s visits as well as centering the community around a commercial area with grocery stores and other attractive stores.
She noted the proximity of AdventHealth Waterman to the school.
The company recently gained approval from the city of Tavares to begin development of their first residential areas, Lerret said. Ideally, those residences will contribute to Pinecrest, she added, noting that the school was just on the edge of their planned community.
Lerret couldn’t give a solid timeline for development, yet, she said. They know what they want the final product to look like, but they’re too early in the process to know how all of it will pan out.
She said that while their timeline is currently in flux, they’re excited, in any case, to see Pinecrest Academy Tavares take the lead.
Original Article at Dailycommercial.com
