St. Pete’s Tomlinson center closes this week, ending nearly 100-year run teaching immigrants and GED seekers

The halls of Tomlinson Adult Learning Center are covered in Christmas decorations and colorful poster projects. You’d never guess that the century-old  school is just days away from shutting its doors forever.

The three-story building overlooking St. Petersburg’s Mirror Lake has been educating eager minds since 1924 and will teach its final class on Friday, Dec. 17. Due to a wide variety of financial factors—including declining enrollment and an aging building—Tomlinson will officially close, and the fate of the historic building will be up to the Pinellas County School Board.

“We’ve known our enrollment numbers have been struggling and have worked to defend them and to try to build them up,” Patrick Jennings, an English as a Second Language (“ESOL”) teacher tells Creative Loafing Tampa Bay in a phone call. “It's been very hard to support the building and the programs that we used to have.”
Jennings adds that COVID-19-related fears of face-to-face class and the rapidly increasing cost of living in downtown St. Pete added to the decline in student numbers. Tomlinson's adult students range in age from their early-'20s to their late-'70s all working to either learn a new language, certain trades, or get their GEDs.

Earlier this year, Mark Hunt, Executive Director of Career, Technical and Adult Education at Pinellas County Schools, presented data to the school board that noted the steady decline of students coming from zip codes immediately surrounding Tomlinson.

“It would be reasonable to say that the real estate market is a factor that’s pushing our students north,” Jennings says. “Both Clearview and Clearwater Adult Center have strong ESOL numbers.”

Although Tomlinson’s imminent closure saddens teachers, administrators and students alike, the school’s atmosphere is still spirited and encouraging. Mere weeks before the closure, life continued as normal, with guidance counselor Patricia Brewer intaking new students near the main entrance; although Tomlinson is closing, Brewer can still set up testing for the new students, making their eventual transfer to other schools easier.

Elsewhere at Tomlinson, advanced GED classes are still happening on the second floor, and ESOL students are practicing for the citizenship test on the third level. With teachers beginning to clear their classrooms out, free books and school supplies appear on tables throughout Tomlinson.

When the closure was made known to the staff a few months ago, Brewer rallied together alongside her students at a school board meeting and tried to convince the body that Tomlinson should remain open.
“Now that the closure is finally happening, I just feel like it's my responsibility to help students feel comfortable about the new places they’re going to,” says Brewer—which Jennings describes as “the great defender of students.” “We're reassuring them that it's not the services that are going away, it's just the building.”

Luisa Shamas, a former ESOL student and Brewer’s current intern, created a change.org petition two months ago in another effort to try to save the historic school. “As a community, we understand that the pandemic has negatively affected the number of students we are receiving, but we strongly believe that there are other ways to fund Tomlinson and that the solution is not to close its doors” the petition, with almost 1,500 signatures, states.

“Sometimes we need to fight for what we think is good for the community…St. Pete will become Miami in 10 years, do we really want that?” asks Shamas, who moved to St. Petersburg from Spain years ago. She originally wanted to work in the ESOL program, before realizing that underserved St. Petersburg natives need Tomlinson just as much as immigrants like herself do.

Both teachers and students have other institutions in Pinellas County where they’ll continue taking and teaching classes next year—Lakewood High School, St. Petersburg College campuses or the Clearview Adult Education Center—but one of the most invaluable losses will be the dissolution of Tomlinson’s ESOL program. The course offers six months of classes for $45, eight different levels, administered by full-time teachers during the day and night, rolling admission (meaning you can join or leave class whenever) and no immigration papers required for enrollment—Tomlinson has one of the most extensive ESOL programs in all of Central Florida. It wasn't uncommon to witness students coming from Tampa and beyond to attend ESOL classes at the lakeside school.

Tomlinson has seen thousands of immigrants come and go throughout the decades. Whether it was during the influx of Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s or to serve Tampa Bay’s ever-growing Hispanic and Caribbean populations, Tomlinson helped them learn skills to thrive in an unfamiliar and sometimes unwelcoming country. It wasn’t uncommon that Tomlinson educators were some of the first people freshly immigrated folks would talk to upon arriving in this country.
Jennings, who’s spent the last 10 years as an administrator, has been teaching ESOL at Tomlinson since August 2021.

“I've had more fun these past few months since—I can't even remember when,” he tells CL at Tomlinson’s Dec. 8 farewell brunch. His students come from countries across the globe—Honduras, China, Belarus, Jordan and Colombia to name a few. The veteran educator will spend his last few years before retirement at SPC’s Midtown campus, where he will teach Adult Basic Education and GED, and hopes to stay in touch with his current ESOL students.

Alongside education itself, Tomlinson educators would often provide students with countless other resources, whether it be finding local food pantries, free clinics, transportation, tuition assistance or jobs. The school often worked with local organizations, like Read Pinellas, to provide the much needed resources. During the height of quarantine, Tomlinson educators provided students with tablets so that they could continue classes online, as highlighted in the summer 2020 newsletter. Currently, Brewer is helping students access free bus passes, provided by a Read Pinellas grant, to help them make the transition to their new schools next year.

Current ESOL students are continuing their education at various other schools throughout the county—although no program will be as extensive as Tomlinson’s. Some students will attend technical classes at different SPC campuses, while others continue GED programs at local community centers like Pinellas County Urban League and Clearview Adult Education Center—located just five miles north of Tomlinson.

One classroom in particular—Toby Isaacson’s literacy class—will be luckily sticking together through the transition. She and her 8 students with ages ranging from early-20s to late-70s make the transition to Lakewood High School to resume classes in January.

It’s unclear what might happen to the 97-year-old building at 296 Mirror Lake Dr. N. Property records show that it’s owned by the Pinellas School system, and a spokesperson for Pinellas Schools told CL that the school board would have to make a decision on the building’s fate. Property records say that the building’s market rate in 2021 is $3.3 million.
The three-story building was originally constructed in the early 1900s as a junior high school and by 1931 bore the name “The Vocational School,” as it pivoted towards technical education. In the 1950s, then-current principal Nat Clark stated that “Tomlinson collects all of the students that the other high schools didn't want,” according to a 1986 article in the Tampa Tribune. The ‘70s and ‘80s marked the height of vocational education at Tomlinson, as it offered a wide variety of programs like cosmetology, industrial sewing, manufacturing and repair, reupholstery and certified medical assistance.

Members of the Tomlinson school family and surrounding St. Petersburg residents want to see the century-old building repurposed into another community-centered space. Principal Godfrey Watson cites plumbing, roofing, and general infrastructure problems throughout the 97 year-old building.

“A local designation for Tomlinson would add to Mirror Lake's inventory of historically-designated properties that already includes the Shuffleboard Club, The Coliseum, and the original St. Petersburg High School,” Manny Leto. Executive Director of Preserve the 'Burg, tells CL in an email. “Without local designation, the building could be demolished. We think the community would rather see this building remain in place and adapted for another use. The former high school, built in 1919 and located almost next door, is a great example. It's currently home to 50 condo units.”

One student in Tomlinson’s digital photography class—a program that was initiated mere months ago—mentions seeing survey flags throughout the property, citing circulating rumors that the lot has already been purchased, although it cannot be confirmed. Earlier this year, the attorneys office which shares a portion of the Tomlinson property listed its section for roughly $5 million, but has since taken down the “for sale” sign. Only time will tell what the Pinellas County school board decides to do with the historic building and its surrounding lot.

Whether it's a rehabilitated community center or a high-rise apartment overlooking the scenic Mirror Lake, St. Petersburg is undoubtedly losing a historical landmark that has helped thousands of marginalized folks throughout the decades—locals, immigrants, and refugees alike. The current faculty is putting a positive spin on the inevitable, and are confident that the Tomlinson spirit will disperse across other adult education programs in Pinellas County. “I keep reminding my students that everyone who has helped them here, is just somewhere else helping people,” Principal Watson tells CL in a hopeful tone.

On Wednesday, Dec. 8, handfuls of former teachers and students gathered for a farewell celebration in the hallway of Tomlinson’s first floor, holding paper plates, discussing memories, and taking photos together.

At the party, Principal Watson took time to shout out one student in particular—Kenny Reddick, a man in his 60s who recently graduated with his GED after a decade of taking classes at Tomlinson. After learning how to read in basic literacy classes and persevering through years of medical issues, Reddick and his longtime tutor Jim Gibbs said goodbye to the folks that helped them with this incredible milestone. Kenny’s catch phrase “winners never quit and quitters never win” could be heard echoing through the halls of the school that day.

Principal Watson, current and former students, and faculty gathered around Kenny, clapping as he proudly held up his diploma—one of the last ones to come out of Tomlinson.

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