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FORT WALTON BEACH The STEAM machine has a new parking space.
The out-of-commission school bus sitting in front of Liza Jackson Preparatory School and used for education in science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics will be making a permanent stop at Emerald Coast Science Center in Fort Walton Beach. Liza Jackson’s board of directors voted to donate the vehicle to the center.
Lisa Burgess, the STEAM teacher at Liza Jackson, spent the summer of 2018 with volunteers, flipping the bus from transportation purposes to educational ones. She is eager and excited about its new destination.
“It would give access to more students than just Liza Jackson,” Burgess said. “It opens the door for creativity and STEAM for all kinds of students within the area for community purposes. Even though it was a labor of love and something unique and special to the school; it was a no-brainer if the goal was to create lifelong learners in the community.”
The new Liza Jackson Preparatory School will continue to provide instruction for students from kindergarten through eighth grade. But those students, who will arrive in August, will have 16,000 additional square feet in which to move around.
Roberts said plans call for adding another grade level class for each elementary grade, a move that will raise the student population to close to 1,000.
It is somewhat ironic that the dream of building a new Liza Jackson Preparatory School was made possible to some degree by the demise of the YMCA of Florida s Emerald Coast.
At the time the local YMCA declared bankruptcy in 2014, its Fort Walton Beach campus occupied about 20 acres that had been deeded to the city by the Air Force. But the Air Force benevolence hinged on the provision that the land be used for recreational and/or educational purposes.