Students and families streamed back onto a freshly rebuilt campus in Riviera Beach on Monday, as West Riviera Beach Elementary reopened its doors after two years of construction with a brand-new cafeteria, updated play areas and a media center in place of the aging buildings that once stood there. About 600 students are expected to attend this year, and for the first time the school will serve only Pre-K through second grade rather than the full Kindergarten-through-fifth-grade range it once held.
The reopening, first reported by WPTV, comes as the Palm Beach County School District realigned enrollment at West Riviera Beach Elementary, moving Pre-K, first- and second-graders from Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune and Lincoln elementary schools into the newly renovated building. Camille Long, the district's north regional superintendent, said the state-of-the-art campus is a game-changer for the community. Long has a personal tie to the school, too — she attended West Riviera Beach Elementary as a student.
Crystal Watson, a staff member at the school, said the new technology and improvements will make her job much easier. Alicia Taylor said the school's leadership team can now focus on foundational skills, and she believes the specialized approach will give students a stronger foundation in reading and math.
A District-Wide Boundary Shake-Up
The reopening is the visible piece of a much larger reorganization. In March, the Palm Beach County School Board approved Boundary Study RB-1, officially consolidating the attendance boundaries of West Riviera Beach Elementary and Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary and reassigning all students from Lincoln Elementary into the newly combined zone, according to the Palm Beach County School District. Under the new pairing model, West Riviera Beach Elementary now handles only Pre-K through second grade, while Bethune Elementary takes on grades 3 through 5 for the shared attendance area.
A slice of Bethune's former zone north of Blue Heron Boulevard was reassigned to Washington Elementary School as part of the same boundary study, though district rules allowed rising fifth-graders and their siblings the option to stay put at their existing schools. The reshuffling followed the closure of Lincoln Elementary, which served roughly 380 to 400 students before shutting down at the end of the 2025–2026 school year to be repurposed — the district's first school closure in more than three decades, as reported by WLRN.
What's Inside the Rebuilt Campus
The construction itself was extensive. Project construction manager Wharton-Smith Inc. said the overhaul involved demolishing the original administration and classroom building to make way for a 45,000-square-foot replacement, expanding the cafeteria, and converting a 15,000-square-foot classroom building into a media center that includes a soundproof studio. Groundbreaking took place on April 10, 2024, launching a 28-month construction cycle that led to this week's reopening.
The multimillion-dollar modernization was funded through Palm Beach County's 2016 voter-approved One-Cent Sales Tax Referendum, the half-penny tax that has paid for facility upgrades across the county district. West Riviera Beach Elementary originally opened in 1966, meaning the campus operated for 60 years before this transformation, and project leaders designed the new buildings to serve the community for another five decades.
At the April 2024 groundbreaking, Palm Beach County School District Superintendent Michael Burke said the updated campus “reimagines where a child in this community starts their educational journey in this state-of-the-art facility as a Mustang,” referencing the school's mascot.
Part of a Bigger Plan for Riviera Beach Schools
The elementary shake-up connects to a broader, multi-year facility plan for education in Riviera Beach. According to WLRN's earlier reporting, the district intends to renovate the former Lincoln Elementary campus to temporarily house Inlet Grove Community High School students while a proposed $258 million public high school is built in the city, a project community leaders have pushed for over the years. Taken together, the boundary realignment and the West Riviera Beach rebuild represent one piece of a district-wide effort to reorganize where and how Riviera Beach students learn, starting with the youngest.
