Lake Brantley High School - History

History

In 1969 the School Board of Seminole County, Florida determined that because of projected population growth, three new schools would need to be built in the southern part of the county. School Board Chairman John G. Angel proposed a $10-million bond issue to fund these schools, and the issue was handily approved by the voters. The plan was that an elementary school, a middle school and a high school all be built adjacent to each other in an "educational plaza" on Sand Lake Road, just west of Forest City Road. (In 1977, Angel recalled that the bond issue had passed so easily that he immediately wished that he had asked for twice as much). All three schools (and several others in the next few years) were designed by architect Eoghan Kelley, a somewhat controversial figure in Central Florida in his day.

Kelley's designs were based in part on a trend of the early 1970s called the Open School Concept. The outer school building was composed of large, simple geometric shapes with no windows, and the interior of each module was so laid out that it had few permanent walls; instead, movable walls abounded and very few of the classrooms had any doors. This was supposedly done to facilitate free movement between the rooms and other resources (such as the libraries) in each module. As the first few years were to make clear, the "no-doors" concept proved a failure, with teachers complaining constantly about noise from other rooms and halls. Eventually all the gaps were boarded up and each classroom got a door.

Kelley also stated that he had designed each school to be a fallout shelter if ever needed. (There was controversy as to whether these buildings were stout enough to play such a role, no exterior windows notwithstanding. They contained no steel reinforcement in the outer cinder-block walls, and engineers doubt that they could have withstood a hurricane stronger than Category 2 or even a tornado, let alone a nuclear weapon). Kelley was awarded the contract to design the Educational Plaza schools and several others in Seminole County, as well as other schools in Florida, primarily in Pasco County.

The first school, Forest City Elementary, was completed in 1971 and its first principal was Mr. Arnold C. Otto. (This area was originally part of the incorporated (in 1972) municipality of Forest City, however, within the decade it was absorbed into the city of Altamonte Springs. Brantley's early yearbooks refer to the school being in "Forest City, Florida," a ghost of former times). Teague Middle School was completed in 1972 and John Angel, by then retired from the school board, became its first principal. Lake Brantley High School was actually opened in 1973 and its first principal was Mr. William ("Bill") Daugherty.

Bill Daugherty first proposed the plans for Lake Brantley to the school board in 1971, and, because construction of the new building was not complete, classes were started in September 1972 on the old Lyman High School campus. (This old campus is now the site of R. T. Milwee Middle School; the new (1970) and present site of Lyman High is a mile to the north). The new building (LBHS Version 1.1) of about 141,000 square feet (13,100 m2) was finally completed in February 1973, and Lake Brantley's 900 students moved across town and started classes on February 15. The new building was officially dedicated on Monday, May 13, 1973.

LBHS's first official year in the new building began on September 4, 1973, with 1,100 students in two grades, 9 and 10. One grade was added in each of the next two years and LBHS's first graduating class matriculated on June 8, 1975. In 1974, the school board set its final districting lines, and many Brantley students (all those who lived east of Interstate 4) had to move to Lyman High School. Because enrollment was growing so quickly, a new addition to the original building was completed in the summer of 1975, at a cost of $3,500,000 - which was the entire cost of the original building, some five times larger than the addition. (Rampant inflation overtook John Angel's original budget, and the original school was built for only $17 a square foot. This was to come back to haunt the school board in later years). The open-air commons was roofed over during this time as well, and the new size of LBHS (Version 1.2) was 220,000 square feet (20,000 m2) of enclosed building. The stadium, Tom Storey Field, was finished and dedicated in November 1974, and its final improved cost (including the concrete bleachers structure and a scoreboard) was $70,000. A final addition was made to the original school in 1989, and LBHS's final size (Version 1.3) was about 270,000 square feet (25,000 m2).

Within just six years of the opening day, serious flaws in construction and material quality began to appear in the school building, and severe roof leaks appeared in many different places. Two major repair and refurbishing projects were undertaken in 1980 and 1985, but eventually, the school board had had enough, and plans were unveiled in 1996 to demolish the school and rebuild it from the ground up. By 1979, Seminole County had given up on Eoghan Kelley and by 1996, five of the fifteen schools he designed in Seminole County were demolished; the other ten were gutted and re-modeled. Even so, the exteriors of these elementary schools - Altamonte, Forest City, Lake Orienta, Sabal Point and Winter Springs, and a private school (Forest Lake Academy) clearly show their Kelley School design. Only a couple fragments remain of the others: the gymnasium of Lake Howell High School, and a partial addition to the original Teague Middle School. His other Florida schools in the counties of Alachua, Columbia, Flagler, Pasco, Sarasota and Volusia are still standing.

The new school design was thoroughly traditional, consisting of many different buildings instead of the old monolithic structure. The projected cost was $39 million, which wound up being $42 million even after some proposed items were omitted - quite a lot more than the $7.1 million cost of the first school. Construction of the present LBHS began in 1998, and demolition of the original building began the day after classes ended in May 1999. Demolition was complete by August, and the new school buildings (LBHS Version 2.0) opened for business the same month - not totally finished. Of all the structures on campus today, only the stadium is original. All of the east wall and about a third of the north wall of the original 700-module (which held Band, Chorus, Dance and part of the gymnasium concessionary) were left intact and re-used as the outer walls adjacent to the auditorium and the cafeteria. They are now the only remaining fragments of the original school.