In Seminole County, a Black community will finally get a promised community center
After more than a decade of promises to the historic Black community of East Altamonte, Seminole County will build a community center on 12 acres where the now-shuttered Rosenwald School stood — a relic of school segregation.
“I am passionate about Rosenwald. But I am angry about it,” said Cora Snead, 81, an East Altamonte resident who attended elementary school and later taught at Rosenwald.
“This has been going on for too long, far too long,” she said as she urged Seminole commissioners to approve preliminary plans this week. “Give us the community center. That’s what I am asking for; what we all are asking for … It will serve as a hub for our community.”
Commissioner Amy Lockhart agreed. She has long advocated turning the fenced-in county property on Merritt Street, adjacent to railroad tracks, into a public area that benefits the tight-knit East Altamonte community.
“This has been a long road,” Lockhart said during Tuesday’s commission meeting. “This is something that we committed to many, many years ago and we need to fulfill it.”
Commissioners then voted unanimously to demolish the remaining shells of three existing school buildings — built in 1959 and 1960 — and start design and construction of a 6,000-square-foot community building.
According to preliminary plans, it would feature a pair of multipurpose rooms that could accommodate about 200 people, a computer lab and three smaller rooms that can serve as offices, along with restrooms and storage areas.
Construction would cost roughly $4 million, with operations and maintenance pegged at about $500,000 a year, county officials said. Seminole would likely tap the nearly $2.7 million left of what it received from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The project should be completed in about three years.
On Thursday morning, Snead and other East Altamonte residents walked around the shaded grassy site that once was the Rosenwald campus. They reminisced about attending school decades ago, pointing out where the classrooms, principal’s office, health clinic and auditorium stood.
“For me, this is very exciting,” said Irvin Simpson, 58, who attended kindergarten at Rosenwald in the 1970s and has long advocated for a community center.
“I can’t wait. This is finally going to happen.”
Adrian Stevens, who attended fifth grade at Rosenwald in 1972, quietly touched the walls now covered with peeling green paint and graffiti. “It’s a lot of memories,” she said.
Simpson remembered playing ball on the grassy field as a young boy. Snead talked about being baptized in nearby Lake Mobile.
She pointed to a wooded area near the main building and noted that’s where the outhouse for students stood in the late 1940s. She said it wasn’t unusual for Black schools at the time to lack indoor plumbing and telephones.
Her husband, Paul Snead, who also taught at Rosenwald, said the existing school buildings should be cleared as soon as possible to make way for the new community center.
“The quicker they can raze this, the better,” he said.
When Rosenwald School opened in 1931 during segregation, it was a one-story brick building with four rooms and about 135 students. It was among thousands of other such schools for Black students in the South founded with financial backing from Julius Rosenwald, an owner of Sears, Roebuck and Co., and Black educator Booker T. Washington.
In 1951, East Altamonte broke away from neighboring Altamonte Springs after residents led by Condor Merritt, Cora Snead’s father, sued arguing the city was assessing taxes on property owners but failing to provide services.
A federal judge ruled in favor of the residents and East Altamonte has since existed as an unincorporated community of Seminole County.
After a fire destroyed most of the earliest Rosenwald buildings the school campus was rebuilt in 1960. A pair of metal plaques on an outside wall still remain honoring the opening.
After Seminole schools became fully integrated in the mid-1970s, Rosenwald School was converted from an elementary school into the Rosenwald Exceptional Student Education Center.
In 2011, the school closed and students were moved to Endeavor School and Hopper Center in Lake Mary. School and county officials at the time said the property should be redeveloped to benefit the community, rather than being sold off to a private developer.
In June 2019, Seminole County bought the property and buildings for $1.75 million from the Seminole County School Board.
County staff then launched community meetings to help decide how to redevelop the old campus. Then the pandemic struck and meetings were canceled. Residents also could not unite behind a redevelopment plan. Some wanted a community center and health clinic. Others wanted athletic fields, a new school and affordable housing for seniors.
In 2022, Seminole commissioners gave preliminary approval for a new community center in the existing school buildings, but that plan fell through because of lack of funding.
Now county leaders say it’s time to build a modern center in a clapboard architectural style that honors the old Rosenwald schools.
“We have talked about this for way too long,” Commissioner Bob Dallari said. “Let’s just get this thing done and figure out when we’re doing the opening.
“We don’t need to be back here in another two years and saying: ‘We’re sorry, we didn’t move forward.’”
