By Joshua Manning
Children in the fledgling community of Wellington were first bused east to attend school. However, after years of petitions, the School District of Palm Beach County opened Wellington Elementary School in 1980, led by the iconic Buz Spooner, the school’s founding principal.
Marketed as the perfect community for families, Wellington’s early days lacked one crucial element — schools.
Young kids were bused to Melaleuca Elementary School on Gun Club Road, while older kids made the long hike east to Forest Hill High School.
But all that began to change in 1980, when the School District of Palm Beach County opened Wellington’s first elementary school after years of petitions from area residents.
The school district owned a site at the corner of Big Blue Trace and Paddock Drive, but no building. So, when Wellington Elementary School opened in 1980, it consisted of 16 portables, with no kitchen and no cafeteria. The first PTA meeting was held at the old Wellington Country Club.
“The portables worked well, unless it was raining,” recalled the late Buz Spooner, the school’s founding principal, during a 2001 interview.
When it opened, the school had children from grades three, four and five, as well as one class for grade six. Kindergarten and grades one and two were first held at Greenacres Elementary School. Spooner had been the principal there before being assigned to become Wellington Elementary’s first principal.
“On my first visit to the school, I got lost,” Spooner recalled. “I was looking for a school, but I found a big sandy pasture.”
Spooner took over as principal during the 1979-80 school year. “It was a challenge,” he recalled. “There were a lot of glitches you wouldn’t expect. Each day, we had to look under the steps, because small animals nested there. We had raccoons and armadillos, but thankfully, nobody ever got bitten.”
During the 1982-83 school year, the students and staff of the fledgling school began moving into a permanent facility built at the site. “The kids got to attend the groundbreaking ceremony,” Spooner noted.
Spooner remained the principal of Wellington Elementary School until 1999, when he retired. He had been a part of the school system in Palm Beach County for 43 years, starting as a teacher at Greenacres Elementary School. But his fondest memories were of his two decades of service in Wellington. “I was able to help more children as a principal,” Spooner said. “By hiring the teachers, you can shape the kind of school you want to have.”
Spooner grew Wellington Elementary School from that cluster of portables to a full-fledged school that once taught up to 1,500 students per year as the school district raced to keep up with the area’s explosive growth.
Outside Wellington, Spooner was best known for his many years as president of the Palm Beach County Safety Patrol. It was in that role that he touched the lives of fifth graders countywide, working tirelessly to organize a massive movement of students from Palm Beach County to Washington, D.C., each year.
Spooner passed away in 2019, but he is still fondly remembered by many in Wellington.
Elaine Cittadino was Spooner’s executive assistant from the time the school opened for 16 years, before she moved to the after-school program. She recalled how Spooner often said he never wanted to do anything but work with elementary school students. “Right from the very beginning, Mr. Spooner created his school. He interviewed and hand selected everyone at that school,” she said.
Cittadino also recalled how he was very supportive of his teachers and used to say, “I always hired people who were smarter than me and let them do their jobs.” She added that one of his favorite sayings was, “They may forget what you taught them, but they will never forget how you treated them.”
Cathy West, who has been a teacher at the school since 1982 and currently serves as the media specialist, agreed that he was a “teachers first” principal. “Each year, he would meet with the grade level teachers and make sure they were all on the same page,” he said. “He always had an open-door policy.”
Sue Bierer was a fifth-grade teacher at the school from 1985 until her retirement in 2012.
“Any time a teacher or a class had a special program, he was always really supportive of that,” said Bierer, who is excited that her granddaughter will be attending Wellington Elementary School as a kindergartener.
Cittadino has vivid memories of the school’s early years.
“We had 13 portables with grades three through five. Sixth grade also came in for a year,” she recalled about the school’s opening year. “We really spawned all the other schools in Wellington and beyond. H.L. Johnson started on our campus. There was lots of wildlife out there — foxes, snakes, armadillos. We were always very conscious of the environment and had many school cleanups.”
West recalled her first year working in a portable classroom that was also the school’s library, the speech teacher’s office and teacher’s lounge. There was a black indigo snake that lived under the portable. “Every so often, you would hear a scream because it startled someone,” she said.
Bierer added that the original campus often got waterlogged. “We would have to trudge through the water to get to where we were going,” she said.
Nevertheless, the fond memories outweigh the problems of the early years. “I remember all the fun we had,” Bierer said.
The three teachers are proud of how Wellington Elementary has matured through the years into the school it is today.
“We have a wonderful administration right now that tries to keep up with the traditions of the school,” West said, adding that the current administration building is dedicated to Spooner.
Cittadino is proud of the strong fine arts program at the school, and Bierer likes the new buildings on the campus, which she said are “very conducive to learning.” Bierer also loves the enthusiasm of the young teachers on the current campus.
Wellington would not get its next school until 1987, when Wellington Landings Middle School opened. Wellington High School and New Horizons Elementary School both opened in 1990, finally allowing all Wellington students to stay in the community for their entire public-school experience.
Since then, Wellington has been joined by another high school, two more middle schools and four more elementary schools — Panther Run Elementary School (1991), Binks Forest Elementary School (1999), Polo Park Middle School (2000), Palm Beach Central High School (2003), Equestrian Trails Elementary School (2003), Elbridge Gale Elementary School (2006) and Emerald Cove Middle School (2007).
