School Choice and Magnet Programs in Melbourne — Melbourne, Florida

Every Melbourne student has a zoned Brevard Public Schools campus, and school choice is the set of district applications that let a family ask for a different one. Two application types do most of the work. The Education Location Option, or ELO, asks to attend a school other than the zoned school, often for convenience. The Education Program Option, or EPO, asks for a seat in a specific magnet or specialty program. The Melbourne Beachsider explained the split in November 2017, and Melbourne school websites in 2025 and 2026 still use both labels.

Several of the county's best known choice programs sit inside Melbourne city limits. West Shore Jr/Sr High on Wildcat Alley is a full choice school with no attendance zone. Stone Magnet Middle on East University Boulevard is a district magnet. Melbourne High on Bulldog Avenue hosts an International Baccalaureate World School, and Eau Gallie High on Commodore Boulevard lists AICE/Cambridge and academy programs. All of them take applications through the Focus parent portal used across Brevard Public Schools.

A Melbourne school's own notice shows how an ELO works in practice. Sabal Elementary on North Wickham Road posted on April 9, 2025 that the ELO option is lottery based, with an ongoing waitlist during the school year, and that there is no fee to apply. Applicants must be current Florida residents and upload two proofs of residency to Focus, and families agree to a behavior, academic and attendance contract during the application. For 2025-2026, the elementary window opened April 4, 2025, at 8 a.m. and closed May 2, 2025, at 5 p.m., and parents could apply for up to five schools.

EPO seats are for programs rather than locations. In the 2017 Beachsider report, the district's assistant superintendent for equity, innovation and choice described EPO placements as a way to reach career and technical, advanced academic and magnet programs, many of them still filled by lottery or by longer applications. The same article noted that Brevard had stopped busing students who lived outside their neighborhood school boundaries about four years earlier, and that a hub-based plan to transport EPO students was then being prepared. Melbourne High now links a combined page on Education Location and Educational Program (ELO/EPO) choices from its counseling menu.

State law sits behind the ELO option. Florida Statute 1002.31 defines controlled open enrollment as a system that lets districts make assignments using parents' indicated preferential educational choice as a significant factor, and requires Brevard and every other district to post capacity by grade level and update it every 12 weeks.

Choice programs in Melbourne are part of a much larger county catalog. The 2017 Beachsider report counted more than 60 specialty programs across Brevard County schools, ranging from fashion design and the arts to intensive math and science, and listed career academies, magnet schools, Cambridge and International Baccalaureate among the options. The district's assistant superintendent for equity, innovation and choice told the paper that starting a specialty program could cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $250,000, with lower ongoing costs, and that programs were paid for by county and state money and sometimes by private donations, grants and business partnerships.

Priority rules come from Tallahassee rather than from individual Melbourne schools. Florida Statute 1002.31 requires each district school board, including Brevard's, to give preferential treatment in controlled open enrollment to groups that include dependent children of active duty military personnel whose move resulted from military orders, and students residing in the district. The statute also lets a parent enroll a child in any public school that has not reached capacity, subject to class size limits, and states that a district may, but is not required to, provide transportation.

West Shore is the clearest example of a school that exists entirely through choice. The 2017 Beachsider article counted six pure choice schools among Brevard County's 82, where every student must apply to attend, and named West Shore Junior-Senior High School in Melbourne as one of the most popular with beachside families. The article quoted West Shore's description of its design: acceleration opportunities with a strong college preparatory curriculum, so that all students must be at or above grade level.

The West Shore site lists the campus at 250 Wildcat Alley, Melbourne, and links a Family Dashboard run by the district's Equity, Innovation and Choice office. Its academic menu includes gifted services, small learning communities and a senior project, and as its Jr/Sr name indicates, the Melbourne campus combines junior high and senior high grades.

Stone Magnet Middle at 1101 East University Boulevard is Melbourne's magnet middle school. The Stone Middle site invites applications to two programs by name: the AVID program and Stone's Science Research program, each with its own application. Its elective list includes art, band and orchestra, and culinary courses, and its clubs include an astronaut club, a First Lego League team and an esports team. A 2024 ClickOrlando roundup of Central Florida magnet schools included Stone Middle in Melbourne for grades 7 through 8 among Brevard's magnets, alongside McNair Middle in Rockledge and Palm Bay High.

The Stone name has its own long Melbourne history, told on the Digital Towns history page for Stone High School; the magnet designation is the campus's current role in Brevard Public Schools.

Melbourne High is the city's International Baccalaureate school. The Melbourne High site describes an International Baccalaureate World School hosting both the Diploma Program and the Career Program, alongside Advanced Placement, Career and Technical Education and Dual Enrollment, which it calls an accelerated program that lets students earn college credit while in high school tuition-free. In 2017 the Beachsider reported that Melbourne High's IB program enrolled about 200 students focused on international studies, foreign language and independent research.

Eau Gallie High, on Commodore Boulevard in the city's north end, offers a different menu. The Eau Gallie High site lists an AICE/Cambridge Program, AVID, Career and Technical Education, a Health and Wellness Academy and a Fine Arts Academy, and keeps a page of choice programs available to students zoned for Eau Gallie. The 2017 Beachsider article described Eau Gallie's aviation program, including private pilot and aviation maintenance tracks, with three donated aircraft and a new hangar then under construction on campus.

Choice also reaches across the causeways. The same report said district officials were looking at adding programs at Gemini Elementary in Melbourne Beach to bolster that school's declining enrollment, because closing it was not an option given its location on the barrier island.