Groundbreaking remains some four months away for the planned elementary school in Westlake, but Palm Beach County School District Vice Chair Marcia Andrews is pleased to see the amount of local involvement already taking place.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” Andrews told Westlake City Council members on Tuesday, Nov. 4. “[But] we’re very excited.”
Andrews, whose District 6 includes Westlake and most of the county west of State Road 7, thanked members of Westlake’s Education Advisory Board (EAB) for “working with us over the last few months to make sure this presentation was just what you needed.”
The school, scheduled to open in August 2027, will be located at the intersection of Persimmon Blvd. and Green Lane near the south end of the 6.5-square-mile community that straddles Seminole Pratt Whitney Road.
The school will be 96,000 square feet in three stories, with room for 971 students in kindergarten through grade five. Kindergarten and grade one will be on the first floor, with grades two and three on the second, and four and five on the third, explained David Dolan, the district’s chief of facilities management.
There will be two fields of solar panels with the intention being “fully sustainable, which is a huge precept for the district,” Dolan explained. It also will feature a parking and a drop-off area for parents using golf carts.
“That’s music to my ears,” said Mayor JohnPaul O’Connor, a longtime advocate of golf-cart usage around Westlake.
“Any opportunity that we can do to eliminate some traffic off of the actual roads is one of our big focuses,” Dolan said.
If parents want to get a good look at what the new school will be like, they don’t have to go far. The Westlake school will be built using the same floor plan that has been used successfully in several other projects in the county, including Saddle View Elementary School near Arden, which opened earlier this year. Tours of the school are being arranged for EAB members.
Saddle View opened Aug. 11 with 631 students and 44 teachers, staff and administrators. It was rushed to completion early at cost of $41.7 million to relieve overcrowding at Binks Forest Elementary School in Wellington. Eventually, Saddle View also is slated to host 971 students.
The new Westlake school is being designed to help relieve stress on Golden Grove Elementary School, and on parents who often must drive miles out of their way to drop off their children. Located on 140th Avenue North across a small canal without crossing access, Golden Grove has absorbed most of the elementary school students from fast-growing Westlake.
The new school is projected to cost $43 million. While it will be built on the same framework as Saddle View, it won’t be the same school, Dolan and Andrews stressed. It will have its own unique touches that will reflect the community around it, they said.
“We’ll work with the aesthetics of the school to make sure it is more in line with [Westlake],” Dolan said.
A group of parents and students will be selected for an advisory board helping guide the school’s creation, Vice Mayor Greg Langowski said. “They’ll help pick the school colors, the mascot and give input as to choice of principal,” he said.
Langowski, who serves as council liaison to the EAB, has volunteered to sit in as the council’s representative on the school’s advisory board.
Whoever is selected as the school’s first principal will be “hands on” in terms of shaping the school and “listening to the voices of parents and the community,” Andrews said this week. “It takes a special talent [as principal] to open a new school. We’ll be looking for the best talent available.”
Andrews said that a principal is expected to be named by late summer or early fall of 2026.
There are challenges that still must be dealt with, said O’Connor, including the redrawing of school boundaries in the area — expected to begin in the spring of 2026 — and traffic flow on already busy streets in that part of the community.
“I’m super-excited… to see this project completed in my second term as mayor,” O’Connor said.
Parents and the public can share their thoughts and ideas for the new school at [email protected] and keep up with the Attendance Boundary Committee (ABC) process at www.pbcschoolzones.info.
