Pelican Island Classical Magnet School in Sebastian

Pelican Island Classical Magnet School is the School District of Indian River County public magnet school at 1355 Schumann Drive in Sebastian, the campus long known as Pelican Island Elementary.

The federal school directory lists the Sebastian campus at 1355 SCHUMANN DR, Sebastian, FL 32958, with the phone (772) 564-6500, as an open regular school that is not a charter (NCES). The state school number, 0121, is the same one the Florida Department of Education has used for the Schumann Drive school since its 1999 grade (FLDOE school grades file). The district began its first Classical Magnet program there in the 2025-2026 school year (School District of Indian River County), and the state grades files record the change of name: school 0121 is listed as Pelican Island Elementary School in the 2025 file (FLDOE 2025 school grades file) and as Pelican Island Classical Magnet in the 2026 file (FLDOE school grades file).

The school's own site gives the practical details for 2026-2027: a school day of 8:10 am to 2:51 pm, grades PK-7, the main number 772-564-6500 and a fax number of (772) 564-6493 (Pelican Island Classical Magnet School). That 8:10 start is 50 minutes ahead of Treasure Coast Elementary on 85th Street, which lists a 9:00 am to 3:40 pm day (Treasure Coast Elementary), so a Sebastian family with children at both campuses faces two separate drop-offs.

NCES files the Schumann Drive campus under the locale City, Small, and counted 354 students and 28.00 full-time-equivalent classroom teachers there in 2024-2025, a student/teacher ratio of 12.64 (NCES).

Pelican Island Classical Magnet teaches kindergarten through seventh grade in 2026-2027, plus a prekindergarten program, and the district lists it as reaching K-8 by 2027-2028.

The conversion is one grade a year. A district news item from August 28, 2025, summarizing TCPalm coverage, says Pelican Island Classical Magnet, Fellsmere Elementary, Osceola Magnet and Rosewood Magnet each began by adding sixth grade in 2025-2026 and expand one grade level annually until full K-8 implementation (School District of Indian River County). The same item calls Pelican Island the district's first Classical Magnet program, beginning with kindergarten and first grade for the 2025-2026 school year, so the classical model started in the youngest Sebastian grades while the older students moved up.

The district's 2026-2027 Parent Guide directory lists Pelican Island Classical Magnet School at 1355 Schumann Drive with grades K-7th and the note K-8th by 2027-2028 (SDIRC Parent Guide, page 14). Of the four Indian River County conversions, Fellsmere Academy and Osceola Magnet carry the same 2027-2028 note, while Rosewood Magnet in Vero Beach is already listed as K-8th.

The federal record lags the change. The NCES directory for the 2025-2026 school year still shows a Pelican Island grade span of KG to 6, and its enrollment figures are from 2024-2025 (NCES), so a search result built on federal data understates the Sebastian school by a grade. The school's own banner, PK-7, is the current word.

At Pelican Island Classical Magnet, classical education means the district's Trivium model of grammar, logic and rhetoric, taught through liberal arts, classic texts and direct instruction.

The School District of Indian River County describes the Sebastian school as one of the first public schools in Florida to offer a classical education program (SDIRC). The district lists five components: the Trivium, a three-part framework of grammar (language and knowledge), logic (reasoning and argumentation) and rhetoric (art of persuasion); a liberal arts and sciences curriculum including literature, history, mathematics, science, music, art and foreign languages; explicit teaching of moral character and civic virtue; classic texts and the Western tradition; and direct instruction, with teachers leading structured questioning and discussion.

The district scheduled a ribbon cutting for Pelican Island Classical Magnet School on Thursday, September 18, 2025, at 4:30 PM at 1355 Schumann Drive, Sebastian (SDIRC). The home page carries a line from Aristotle as the school motto, Where educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all, under the heading A Classical Approach (Pelican Island Classical Magnet School).

A seat at Pelican Island Classical Magnet comes through the district's School Choice application, open each year from November 1 to the end of June for the following school year.

The 2026-2027 Parent Guide sets the process for Pelican Island and the other Indian River County choice schools: parents need a Focus account linked to the student, each application can list up to three choice schools, and after the lottery is run parents have ten days to accept or decline the offer (SDIRC Parent Guide, page 23). The practical tip is timing: an application filed in November is in the pool for the next August, while one filed after the end of June waits a full year.

Pre-K is a separate lottery. Full day VPK of 540 hours is offered at Pelican Island Classical Magnet and six other district sites, with a K-8 site day of 8:30am to 2:30pm; the child must be 4 on or before September 1, the VPK lottery application opens in early January, and district VPK does not include transportation or before and after care (SDIRC Parent Guide, page 42).

For students in kindergarten and up, the district Extended Day Program covers the gaps on the Pelican Island bell schedule. At K-8 schools the 2026-2027 Parent Guide sets morning care at 7:00 to 7:40 a.m. and afternoon care from 2:51 to 6:00 p.m., at $25.00 a week for two to five mornings and $45.00 a week for two to five afternoons, plus a $32.00 registration fee for the first child (SDIRC Parent Guide, page 45).

Busing works differently for a choice school than for a zoned one. The district BusPlanner page says that a student attending a choice or charter school is given a depot stop location rather than a stop near home, that depot stops are not within walking distance of home addresses, and that parents must call 772-978-8801 and press 2 for routing (SDIRC BusPlanner). For a family in the Sebastian Highlands or Roseland, that means a drive to the depot, or the Schumann Drive car line, either way.

Pelican Island Classical Magnet earned an A in Florida's 2025-26 school grades, with 67 percent of possible points, after three straight years at B.

The Florida Department of Education file dated September 1, 2026 lists the Sebastian school with 536 points across 8 components, 67 percent of total possible points and 97 percent of students tested (FLDOE school grades file). The same file sets the elementary A line at 62 percent, so the Schumann Drive campus cleared it by 5 points. Its component scores were 71 in grade 3 English Language Arts, 66 in English Language Arts achievement, 65 in ELA learning gains, 75 in ELA gains of the lowest 25 percent, 71 in math achievement, 66 in math gains, 45 in math gains of the lowest 25 percent and 77 in science.

The weak spot in the Pelican Island numbers is math for the lowest-scoring quarter of students, at 45, well below every other component. The file lists the school as Title I, with 67.9 percent of its students economically disadvantaged (FLDOE school grades file), and NCES counted 190 of the 354 students in 2024-2025 as eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (NCES).

The longer Pelican Island record is uneven. The same FLDOE row shows an A in 2009, 2010 and 2011, a slide to a D in 2014, and C grades from the 2015 baseline through 2022, before the B years and the 2026 A (FLDOE school grades file). The 2026 A came in the first full year of the classical program, though the grade measures tested grades 3 and up, not the kindergarten and first grade classes where the program began.

The school shares its name with Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge in the Indian River Lagoon, the first federal bird reservation, established in 1903.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service records that on March 14, 1903, with the encouragement of Frank Chapman and the Florida Audubon Society, President Theodore Roosevelt established Pelican Island in the Indian River Lagoon as the first federal bird reservation (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). The service notes the island covered 5.5 acres in 1903 and was less than half that size by 2000, before a 2001 shoreline enhancement project. The refuge was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963, and Pelican Island was established as wilderness by Congress in 1970.

Last verified: October 14, 2026, on the School District of Indian River County website, the NCES school directory and the FLDOE school grades file.