Education Notebook — Local PTSAs Take Home County Honors

PTA treasurer Rachel Barten

The Hillsborough County Council of PTAs/PTSAs held its annual awards ceremony this year on May 1, with several New Tampa schools, educators and volunteers taking home top honors.

Hector Rivera of Liberty Middle School was named Instructional Person of the Year for middle school. Rivera is a technology resource teacher who was nominated because he, “worked tirelessly to provide technical support and troubleshoot problems that our e-learners encountered with technology during the year,” according to his nomination. Rivera uses his bilingual skills to help Spanish-speaking parents overcome technical difficulties, and enthusiastically supports his school and students.

At the high school level, Dr. Tammy Crawford of Wharton High also received the Instructional Person of the Year award. Dr. Crawford is a success coach at the school who, according to her nomination, “is someone who has been a very strong advocate for all students, but especially for those who sometimes need the most help and are often overlooked.”

Wharton principal Michael Rowan was named Principal of the Year among the county’s high school nominees for the second time in three years.

According to the Wharton PTSA’s nomination, “Our principal, Michael Rowan, works to make our school a safe, welcoming and fun place that students want to come to!”

Hunter’s Green Elementary won awards for Health & Safety for its “Walk & Bike to School Week” event, for Advocacy/Legislation for its “Engage 33647” initiative, and for Volunteer of the Year, which went to PTA treasurer Rachel Barten.

This year was a year of unknowns for Barten, whose work used to include frequent international travel, which was stopped due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Then, she faced unexpected surgery to remove a brain tumor. As she recovered, with no work obligations, she returned to the school PTA and became one of the group’s busiest and most passionate volunteers.

“I honestly think between Covid and my diagnosis, it should have been the worst year ever,” Barten says, “but it truly gave me the opportunity to focus on things I always wanted to do.”

Barten’s main priority is her daughter, Reagan, who is a fourth-grader at the school. She jumped in and volunteered at every possible opportunity, from the school’s fund raisers to running errands, helping with staff appreciation and handing out fliers in the car line after school. 

“It was two very odd crises that turned into blessings,” Barten said. “I was able to totally repurpose my attention to what I’ve always wanted it to be.”

After A Decade In New Tampa, Principal Gaye Holt Retires

After 10 years serving as principal of New Tampa schools, Gaye Holt will retire June 30. She steps down after a 39-year career in education, with the last seven years as the principal of Hunter’s Green Elementary and three years prior to that at Clark Elementary.

“I’m really going to miss everyone, and it’s going to be hard,” she says. “Whether I was at Clark or Hunter’s Green, the boys and girls, the parents, everyone in the community has been nothing but supportive, helpful and caring.”

Holt is known for her hard work and generous spirit, whether it’s greeting each child by name every morning or keeping the campus looking top-notch with her personal, daily inspections.

She says one of the funniest memories she has is when she dressed up as a member of the rock band KISS for a school fund-raising lip synch contest among teachers and staff. 

“It’s those kinds of things that everybody enjoys,” she says, “because it’s very uncharacteristic of me. I did it because the kids love it, and I’ll do anything for those kids – goo and slime, getting iced, all of that, I’ll do it for the kids.”

Her teachers and staff at Hunter’s Green say Holt will be missed tremendously.

“She’s so wonderful about procedures,” says Roxi Coriell, one of HGE’s kindergarten teachers. “There’s a plan for everything and the plan makes sense. When it came to coming back after Covid, I knew that we would be in great hands.”

Coriell says it’s obvious how much Holt cares about all of her students and members of the school community, a sentiment echoed by current PTA president Rebecca Towner.

“She is leaving Hunter’s Green Elementary with a strong foundation and a legacy that will not be forgotten,” says Towner.

Holt’s replacement was scheduled to be named at the Hillsborough County School Board meeting on May 18, which was held after this publication was printed.

Wharton Valedictorian Manages To Make It Look Easy

Siya Patel, foreground, worked hard to graduate with the highest GPA for a female in Wharton history, utilizing advice from brother Yash (background), last year’s salutatorian. (Photo: Charmaine George).

Siya Patel knew when she entered Wharton High that she could become her class valedictorian, but she didn’t really give it much thought.

Instead, Siya decided to focus on her grade-point-average. While the two things — a high GPA and becoming a valedictorian — go hand in hand, she decided she wanted to post the highest GPA ever, so instead of chasing another student for valedictorian, she decided to chase a number: 9.0.

When Siya officially graduates, it will be with a 9.09 weighted GPA, the highest ever for a Wharton High female. Tori Bell had a 9.01 in 2019.

“I wanted my GPA to be well over 9, because that’s the highest in Wharton’s history,” Siya says. “Due to Covid, I thought I wouldn’t make it because some of the classes I wanted to take were only being taught in school. But, I was able to work around it and accomplish my goal.”

Siya achieved her goal with a busy schedule of classes, taking as many as she was allowed. In her time at Wharton, she took 15 dual enrollment course online — three classes each semester her last two years — through Hillsborough Community College, as well as 13 AP classes for Wharton. 

While that may sound like a grind, for Siya, it wasn’t. She managed to fit in time playing the violin in the school orchestra, she was in a number of Honors clubs and volunteered 200 hours.

Like almost every valedictorian at every school, she was masterful in not taking too much and using enhanced time management skills to get it all done.

“I didn’t ever think it was too hard,” she says. “I always just did what I could do.”

The key was not letting the schedule get the best of her. She was attending school during normal hours, and would do her homework before starting on her HCC assignments. She says she split up everything evenly during the week so her weekends wouldn’t be filled with stressful deadlines.

She did not try for an AA degree, saying that it would have involved too many unnecessary classes that she wouldn’t normally be taking. So instead, she took extra math classes. Her favorite was AP Statistics. 

She’ll attend USF in the fall and major in finance. Sometimes, she sits with her father, Dr. Prakashkumar Patel, a neurologist, and her mother, Aarti Patel, and helps do the billing for her father’s practice.

Siya will join brother Yash, a biomedical science major, at USF. Last year, Yash was the salutatorian at Wharton, and used his experience to help guide his sister to the top of the academic standings this year.

“He always helped me whenever I needed help, and was one of the biggest reasons I was able to become valedictorian at Wharton,” she says.

Yash says he is proud of his sister. He advised her about what classes to take, and which ones to avoid, and was happy to see her finish No. 1.

Yash says the best piece of advice he gave his sister was to not rest on her laurels. No one ever asks if he was salutatorian in high school, and next year, no one will probably ask Siya if she was valedictorian. It is one of those nice but fleeting distinctions, and something he says she will discover quickly fades into the past.

“This is just one step in the journey,” he says. “When you go to college you still have to show that same rigor and effort and still be motivated, even if you’re not first every time.”

That won’t be a problem for Siya. When she reunited with the senior class of 2021, which has been scattered due to Covid— some learning in school, others learning at home — due to Covid, she shared that same advice with her classmates at graduation.

“Take everything they’ve learned the last 13 years,” she says, “and put it to good use.”

Everyone can come to graduation in Pasco County

Cypress Creek seniors practice graduation on May 25. (Photo: @CCHSHowler)

Pasco County is opening the doors wide open to graduation.

Pasco County Schools announced on Wednesday that high school graduates will be allowed to invite additional guests and family members to outdoor graduations, and social distancing at the events will no longer be required. The decision was made after reviewing COVID-19 data in schools and in the community.

Masks are still required for indoor graduations, however.

Cypress Creek (June 2, 7 p.m.), Wesley Chapel (June 4, 7 p.m.) and Wiregrass Ranch (June 3, 7 p.m.) are all holding graduation ceremonies in their football stadiums.

Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, high school graduates in Pasco County had been limited to four guests each. Now, graduates can have two guests join them seated on the field, with additional guests seated in the bleachers. Availability of seating will vary due to the size of the venue.

After reviewing data from the Pasco Department of Health and in light of the CDC’s recent relaxing of mask guidance, Superintendent Kurt Browning determined that the potential for harm has been greatly reduced in recent weeks as the county’s seven-day positivity rate recently declined to 4.6 percent, the lowest rate in nearly six months.

“It was our goal all along to make the graduation ceremonies as normal as possible, while recognizing our responsibility to protect the health and safety of all the graduates and guests,” said Superintendent Browning. “A lot has changed in recent weeks, and at this time we are confident that it is safe to remove those restrictions for our outdoor graduations.”

Wiregrass Ranch Valedictorian: Timothy Kovacs

WRH’s Kovacs Takes A Well-Rounded Approach To School

Timothy Kovacs’ love of reading and writing — and hard work — led him to become the Wiregrass Ranch High Class of 2021 valedictorian. (Photo: Charmaine George)

Timothy Kovacs says he hasn’t begun preparing the speech he will give to the Class of 2021 at graduation, but the Wiregrass Ranch High valedictorian isn’t too worried. After all, he took a public speaking class as a requirement for his Associate of Arts (A.A.) degree from Pasco Hernando State College (PHSC) and passed his toughest test — singing the “Baby Shark” song while dancing in front of a class of 30 students.

He says it was terrible, and he lost coordination midway through the dance, but he is no longer leery of public speaking.

And he got an A, for effort.

“So, if I can do that,” he says, “I hope I can present a speech in front of my classmates.”

Getting As is no problem for Kovacs, so it would be a surprise if he didn’t nail his speech. The Bulls’ senior finished his high school career with a 4.71 weighted grade point average, and picked the University of Central Florida in Orlando over the University of Florida in Gainesville and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill for college.

It wasn’t easy, he says. He moved to Wesley Chapel from Orlando, where he attended Hagerty High as a freshman. There, he was No. 14 in a school of 4,000 students, and when he got to the smaller Wiregrass Ranch, he started his sophomore year in the top 3. While he says it hadn’t crossed his mind before, it was at that point Kovacs decided to try to become his class valedictorian.

“I’ve always found competition among my classmates ever since I was in the third grade,” Kovacs says. “I always wanted to get the highest grade, and when I didn’t, I just studied harder.”

At Wiregrass Ranch, that entailed giving up every class (other than those that were graduation requirements) that wasn’t an honors or AP course. 

Last semester, he took nine classes, most of those at PHSC, sprinting across the academic finish line. His toughest challenge was the havoc caused by Covid.

“It really mucked up my AP exams,” he says, especially in classes like AP Chemistry that aren’t best suited for online study. Reviewing for exams was more difficult, and chemistry was not one of his better subjects. 

“When chemistry went virtual…that put me in a more precarious spot than I’ve been in,” he added.

However, Kovacs, also a National Merit Scholarship Finalist, says it was just a matter of finding a way through the new challenges, and finding the positive in Covid’s disruptions by “turning lead into gold.”

Kovacs, who says his favorite class was AP computer science and whose hardest were chemistry and biology, is happy to be valedictorian, although he says it doesn’t make him any smarter than anyone else. In fact, he says there are plenty of students who easily could have become valedictorian, but they chose to pursue music, sports or technology and didn’t have as much time to put into school as he did.

Not that Kovacs is a one-dimensional bookworm. In fact, he’s something of a Renaissance man, who has dabbled in fencing, loves playing the guitar, is a devoted writer and published author who works for two magazines and has a deep interest in politics.

When he wants to relax, he plays his favorite songs from his childhood on his guitar — although he really wishes he had learned the piano as well — and had a story about the pandemic published in the literary magazine Unlimited Literature last summer.

Politics, though, is his passion. 

“I love to read about how countries interact with each other, and why the world is the way that is,” he says. “It’s always such an interesting field to see how the decisions of government officials affect us in daily life. And, the results of diplomacy are fascinating. It’s incredibly cool and I always have a blast learning about it.”

Now that the “Baby Shark” song has prepped Kovacs for his speech, he will tell his fellow classmates at graduation that after years of traveling the same road together, a million different paths now await them. It’s a brave new world, and it doesn’t matter where you are going as long as you are doing what you want to be doing.

Kovacs will be doing just that in college, where he will double major in computer science and political science at UCF. Where that leads him he doesn’t know. He has multiple dreams — becoming a politician, an author or a software engineer are all among them — and is eager to see where his road takes him.

“My goal right now is to go with the flow,” he says, “and make the most of whatever opportunities come my way.”

The Wiregrass Ranch High graduation ceremony is scheduled for Thursday, June 3, 7 p.m., at the school’s football stadium.