SANFORD, Fla. – Parents and students wept Tuesday night as the Seminole County School Board voted to close the Hopper Center and transfer students to two other campuses.
Hopper Center, a special education school located on Bay Avenue in Sanford, cares for approximately 50 students with severe emotional and behavioral disabilities.
Starting in the 2012-2013 school year, students kindergarten through fifth grade will be transferred to Lake Orienta Elementary, while students in sixth and seventh grades will be sent to Endeavor School, an alternative high school.
Students now fear what life will be like in their new schools.
"We are nice to each other," said Ryland Lamson, 11, who is in the sixth grade. "If someone picks on us, they help us and there's not much of a chance of being bullied there. But at a high school, we have a chance of being bullied by bigger people."
His mom said the trained staff at Hopper has helped tame her son.
"Before Hopper, he was Baker Acted quite a few times, he was suspended almost every other day," said Crystal Lamson. "My 11-year-old fragile child is now going to be in a school up to age 22 with criminal records."
The district will save roughly $500,000 by closing Hopper and sending the students to two other campuses. Parents say that's a safety problem, but the district superintendent said the students will be segregated from other non-disabled students.
Parents said their children were in that situation before and it didn't work.
"My biggest fear is that we would not be giving these children the therapeutic needs that they need to get and we would be incarcerating them or putting the in hospitals where they don't need to be," said Josie Sheffield, a parent of a student at Hopper.
Parents said they are going to fight this decision, even if it means going to court.