Local Schools Produce Award Winners

Clark Teacher Named Hillsborough’s Reading Teacher Of The Year!

The Hillsborough County Literacy Association (HCLA) has named Christy Gupta its Reading Teacher of the Year for all Hillsborough County schools.
Gupta is a fifth grade teacher at Clark Elementary in West Meadows, teaching English Language Arts (ELA). She was nominated for the award by the school’s principal, Paulette English, and assistant principal, Nicole Libby.

English says that Gupta is an engaging and dynamic teacher who supports many students outside of her classroom with school-wide programs, such as online Twitter book studies with other teachers.

In class, English says Gupta is creative and motivating, such as when she recently turned her classroom into an operating room to teach her students about “text features” using a “surgery” theme.

“We see that in the early grades a lot,” says English, “but we don’t always see teachers as engaging and making learning fun at the fifth grade level.”

New Tampa Schools Take Home PTA Prizes

Congratulations to the local schools, staff, parents and students who have received awards from the Hillsborough County Council Parent Teacher Association (PTA) for outstanding programs and efforts at their schools during the 2017-18 school year. Of 42 awards given throughout the county in elementary, middle, and high school divisions, 10 were taken home by New Tampa schools, including:

Elementary Schools:
‱ Education: Hunter’s Green Elementary, SMART Super Heroes

Middle Schools:
‱ Advocacy: Benito Middle School, Junior Blue Crew
‱ Family Involvement: Benito Middle School, School Beautification
‱ Health & Safety: Benito Middle School, Red Ribbon Week
‱ Local Unit Instructional: Liberty Middle School, Brendan Paul
‱ Local Unit Non-Instructional: Benito Middle School, Sharon Hineline
‱ Principal of the Year: Liberty Middle School, James Ammirati

High Schools:
‱ Outstanding High School Senior: Wharton High, Rachel Hineline
‱ PTSA President of the Year: Freedom High, Jeanine Ernst
‱ Volunteer of the Year: Wharton High, Michele Echols

Freedom Student Wins
‘All In For CF’ Scholarship
Freedom High senior Kira Taylor is one of 80 people nationwide to be awarded an “All In For CF” college scholarship for the upcoming academic year.
The $5,000 scholarship was awarded by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Kira is a gifted musician and community activist,” said a Vertex representative. “She also happens to be living with cystic fibrosis.”
Kira will attend Hillsborough Community College this fall and is working toward an Associate of Arts degree. She then hopes to pursue a career in special education.

Wharton Turns To A Familiar Face By Hiring New Principal Mike Rowan

A change in leadership at New Tampa’s Wharton High is bringing in a familiar face back to the school.

Mike Rowan (photo), who currently is the principal at King High on N. 56th St., will take over as principal at Wharton on July 1.
While he’ll have some headaches to deal with, as he tries to repair Wharton’s reputation in the community, one thing will be much easier for him — the commute.
Rowan lives in Pebble Creek, just across Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. from the school. His daughter, Delaney, graduates from Wharton this spring.

Not only is Rowan a community member and parent, he also is a former teacher and administrator at Wharton. He was a social studies teacher and soccer coach when the school opened in 1997. Then, in 2006, he was named assistant principal for administration (APA) at Wharton. He served in that capacity for five years before being named the principal at King.

“I’m excited,” says Rowan, who acknowledges he will be facing some challenges at the school, including a negative perception about Wharton. However, he says, “there are a lot of community members — parents, kids and faculty — who want to get rid of that perception. The biggest asset that Wharton has going for it is that all of the people involved – parents, kids, teachers and the community — want (the school) to be successful.”

He says he is looking forward to using his experiences as a Wharton parent, community member, teacher and administrator to make sure, “we are all on the same page, going in the same direction.”

Rowan replaces current Wharton principal Brad Woods, who has been in that role since 2008. Woods announced his resignation to school families on April 12, effective at the end of the current school year. He will move to a position in the human resources department at Hillsborough County Public Schools, as the manager of services and support.

The appointments were made official at the Hillsborough Public Schools School Board meeting on May 1.

Congratulations To Freedom High’s Class of 2018 Valedictorian & Salutatorian


Catherine Weng says she’s never been interviewed before. She has, however, conducted plenty of interviews, as the editor of Freedom’s school newspaper, Revolution.

That’s far from her only role, however. The Class of 2018 Freedom High valedictorian is the definition of well-rounded.

She loves to dance and has studied at the Jansen Dance Project in Tampa Palms since middle school. She’s president of Freedom’s math honor society, Mu Alpha Theta, and has participated in competitions for that club since she was a freshman. She’s also the president of a club she created at Freedom for students who want to learn American Sign Language. Catherine also says she loves to bake, especially cookies and birthday cakes. Oh, and she has a part-time job as a tutor.

Catherine has finished her high school career with an impressive GPA of 8.9. She boosted her GPA well above a “perfect” 4.0 with a combination of honors, Advanced Placement (AP) and dual enrollment (DE) classes, which varied from computer programming classes to astronomy, to American Sign Language, which she really enjoys and isn’t offered at Freedom.

She says she got her first B this year in AP Spanish, where the challenge of being the only non-native speaker has made it hard to understand the wide variety of accents and vocabulary among those in her class. But, she says she doesn’t regret the hard class, “I really like linguistics,” she says. “I speak English and Chinese at home.”

Catherine is part of a large, blended family, and she says she’s especially close to her older sister Diana, who has earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Florida in Gainesville. Diana is still a student at UF, now working toward her Ph.D. in Accounting.

Knowing Catherine’s love of baking, Diana tried to sweeten the deal to get her sister to choose her school.

“She promised me a stand mixer if I came to UF,” Catherine laughs.

Despite exploring options as far away as New York and Seattle, Catherine ultimately decided to join her sister at Florida. She is a Bright Futures scholarship recipient, National Merit Scholarship finalist and a recipient of the Benacquisto Scholarship, which provides incentives for high- achieving students to go to a state university in Florida.

“I have such a good opportunity at UF,” she says. “I’m proud to say I’m a Gator.”

Given Catherine’s love for such a broad range of activities, it shouldn’t be surprising that she hasn’t quite nailed down what she’ll major in at UF. She’ll be in UF’s Honor College, and says she’ll most likely be a business major.

As Catherine leaves high school, she says she will take with her a philosophy to try to absorb the best things from the people around her.

“I’ve made a lot of amazing friends,” she says. “They have different skilIs and virtues and amazing things about them. I don’t know if I just got lucky to be at Freedom or if people are amazing everywhere.”

She’s about to find out about the people in Gainesville, at least.

“I’m happy to go to a ridiculously big school,” she says. “I’ll never run out of people to meet or things to do.”

Salutatorian Alejandro Michel
Freedom’s Salutatorian is Alejandro Michel, who had a GPA of 8.8. Alejandro also is a well-rounded student, who has excelled in both academics and athletics.

On Saturday, May 4, Alejandro graduated from Hillsborough Community College in the morning, after earning enough credits through dual enrollment classes — while a student at Freedom — to receive his Associate of Arts (AA) degree.

After the ceremony, he traveled to Jacksonville for the Florida Class 4A High School Track & Field State Championships, qualifying this year for the first time. He is primarily a cross country runner, but found success running track this spring, as he moved on from excellent finishes at the District and Regional meets to run in the State meet, too.

Before attending Freedom, both Alejandro and Catherine attended Liberty Middle School and before that, both attended Chiles Elementary, also in Tampa Palms, since kindergarten.

They have something else in common, too. As Alejandro heads off to Florida State University in Tallahassee, he is choosing to go to school with his brother, Max, who graduated from Middleton High and HCC this spring, as well.

“We plan to have our own apartment together, close enough to ride a bike to campus,” Alejandro says. “I’ve been riding my bike to school since Chiles and I want to keep doing that.”

Alejandro says he has two main loves — running and math. At FSU, he plans to major in statistics and minor in computer science. He is on an accelerated track so that he will finish both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in just three years.

He says for his junior and senior year, he’s taken three math classes every semester, including AP Statistics, AP Calculus A/B and B/C, Calculus II and III and others. This year, he needed one more class at Freedom to keep his full-time status, so he chose Honors Trigonometry. “The teacher knows the level of math I have and lets me teach the class sometimes,” he says.

Alejandro intends to become an actuary — a mathematician who specializes in risk and probability. “Really, I would have loved to be a math teacher or professor,” he says, “but there’s a work/life balance you can get with being an actuary, working only 40 hours a week.”

He thinks that will leave him with enough time and financial stability to also pursue a career as a professional runner, with the flexibility to continue to train and run.

He says that on his journey so far, he’s learned about pursuing his passion and how that leads to success.

“Do you just want to be successful, or do you really enjoy waking up every day and getting out there and having a runner’s high?,” he asks. “You have to love the process, not just the idea of being successful.”

Congratulations Go Out To Wharton High’s Top Students Of 2018! 

Wharton High salutatorian Sonile Peck (left) and valedictorian Anthonia Elensi (center, as well as top left on this page), who together founded the school’s Black Student Union earlier this year, with sponsor Rachel Shellman, who also is the school’s media specialist.

Wharton High Class of 2018 valedictorian Anthonia Elensi and salutatorian Sonile Peck have a lot in common.

Both went to Turner Elementary and Bartels Middle School before the schools were combined to become Turner-Bartels K-8 School.

They are both the youngest siblings in families with high achievers who previously graduated from Wharton in the top five percent of their respective classes.

Neither set out to have the highest Grade Point Average (GPA) in their graduating class, but once they realized they were on track, they kept doing what they were doing to stay at the top.

Both are getting ready to attend college and both plan to become doctors.

Anthonia and Sonile are both are widely respected for what may be the jewel in the crown of their high school careers — founding a Black Student Union at Wharton, which has become one of the school’s most popular clubs this year.

“We wanted to create a platform for black students to feel comfortable and have a community to be empowered,” Anthonia says.

They approached school librarian Rachel Shellman last year and asked her to sponsor the club.

Now, Shellman has nothing but praise for the pair. “They are phenomenal,” she says. “They have very strong leadership skills. They are both well spoken and they had a great year.”

She says the pair’s biggest success was planning the school’s first Black History Month celebration. They planned a school-wide event that Shellman says was very well received. “Students and teachers were very complimentary,” Shellman says. “No one knew what to expect for a first-time event, but they got a lot of positive feedback.”

Nearly 90 students joined the club, which Sonile and Anthonia say is a large one for Wharton, especially for one in its first year.

“Both young ladies are tremendous students – obviously, since they are valedictorian and salutatorian,” says principal Brad Woods. “But the way they were able to create the Black Student Union and grow its membership this year is also tremendous.”

Magda Rodriguez, the school’s college career counselor, who has been there since Wharton opened in 1997, says the pair are the first black, female valedictorian and salutatorian at the school.

“I don’t want my skin color to matter
,” begins Sonile. Anthonia finishes her sentence, “But it does matter.”

Last year’s Honor Court, which includes the Top 10 students in the school academically, had no black students. Anthonia and Sonile say the Black Student Union is a platform to help students do what they want to do, both academically and culturally.

As they graduate from Wharton, they are passing the torch to new leadership. Both hope that eventually, the club will include mentorship opportunities for its members. “If you can do something that can empower people of your skin color, you should,” says Anthonia.

In addition to the Black Student Union, both girls participated in clubs such as the National Honor Society and the Science National Honor Society at Wharton.

Sonile also participated in HOSA, the club for students who intend to be future health professionals that was previously called “Health Occupations Students of America.” Through this program, Sonile says she has prepared to take an exam in May to become a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). She says she thinks being a CNA will be a great job for her while she is attending college.

Anthonia and Sonile took a combination of high school classes, advanced placement (AP) classes and dual enrollment classes. Anthonia’s weighted GPA of 7.81 just edged out Sonile’s weighted GPA of 7.77. They both expect to have more than 60 college credit hours when they start their college careers this fall.

As for her Wharton experience, Anthonia says she’ll take with her a lot of memorable lessons, such as perseverance.

“At times where I felt like I was doing a lot both academically and with clubs,” she says, “I learned it’s important to finish what you start – and finish strong.”

Sonile was accepted to prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, the school of her dreams that she says motivated her to do her best throughout high school.

She is now looking at scholarships, which she says is the “harder part.” She also has been accepted at University of Florida in Gainesville, and will go there if it doesn’t work out for her to go to Johns Hopkins. Sonile hopes to one day be an oncologist.

If she does end up at UF, she’ll be there with Anthonia, who will attend the school to study health sciences, with the goal of becoming a doctor, although she’s not sure what field she wants to go into yet.

Sonile has some advice for younger students.

“Focus on the day to day,” she says. “Senior year is fun and exciting and eventful, but make sure you’re doing what you need to do right now.”

Congratulations to all of our graduating New Tampa high school students, whether at Wharton, Freedom or other public and private high schools. We will feature Freedom High’s Valedictorian Catherine Wang in our May 18 edition of New Tampa Neighborhood News.

2018 Wharton Top 10

1. Anthonia Elensi

2. Sonile Peck

3. Gregory Harvey

4. Stephen Maldonado

5. Yasmine Gillespie

6. Cameron Newborn

7. Alice Cheng

8. Rachel Hineline

9. Ashley Zack

10. Mackenzie Willman

In-School Clubs Inspire Students At Liberty; MATHCOUNTS Team Makes States 

Liberty students can choose from more than 35 club options, which focus on interests such as art, calligraphy, board games, guitar, sports and science. Other clubs focus on community service or helping students to be the best versions of themselves.

Typical middle school clubs might involve the same group of high achievers joining in multiple groups to celebrate their successes, give back to their communities and start prepping their resumes for the inevitable, if still far-off, college applications.

At Liberty Middle School in Tampa Palms, however, clubs are designed to include all students, offered once a month as part of the school day.

Spanish teacher Katie Smith is the coordinator for Liberty’s clubs program. “The entire school is following the same schedule,” she says, “so all of the kids get to participate.”

She explains that the clubs were started to provide extra support for some students who may not have role models at home.

“We want to give them a chance to find people they can connect with, adults they don’t regularly interact with, or peers with similar interests,” says Smith. “We want them to make connections and have a reason why they like to come to school.”

Katie credits Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Nelson Agholor, who attended Liberty (see story, pg. 1), with planting the seed that grew into the school’s clubs. She recalls him visiting Liberty a couple of years ago and telling the teachers how having opportunities to build relationships with people who cared about him made a huge difference in his life.

“He started a conversation about reaching those kids, and that’s where I got the idea,” Katie says.

Liberty students can choose from more than 35 club options, which may focus on interests such as art, calligraphy, board games, guitar, sports and science. Other clubs focus on community service or helping students to be the best versions of themselves.

One unique club is the “Gentlemen’s Club,” led by physical education teacher Bryan Erwine and school resource officer Victor Moreta. “They focus on what it means to be a man — a gentleman — and the power of believing in yourself and how you show yourself to the world,” Katie explains. “Some kids are hand-picked to be in that group because they show leadership potential and need a little coaxing. Once they’re in there, the two men running the group are amazing, so kids really want to connect with them.”

Students from the Rescue Me! Pet Club will visit the Humane Society of Tampa Bay on March 2. They were invited on the field trip after dropping off collected donations back in December.

Susan Stabile, a school counselor who co-sponsors the club, says her students are excited for their behind-the-scenes tour of the facility and that she hopes all 50 club members will attend. “We hope that our students will be lifelong animal advocates and inspire others as well,” Susan explains.

These kind of connections are exactly what Katie hopes the clubs will foster. She says she hopes to bring the community into the school to further enhance the goals of the clubs. “We’re trying to reach out to the community so people can see what’s going on and how the community can shape and empower these kids with their involvement.”

She adds, “It’s great to have teachers, but for some clubs, like our food club, is there a restaurant owner who wants to work with the kids? Are there athletes who want to help with our sports clubs?”

If you’d like to help in any way, email Katie Smith for more information at Kaitlyn.Smith@sdhc.k12.fl.us.

Liberty Middle School’s MATHCOUNTS team finished second out of 17 teams at the Regional competition on Feb. 2, earning the team a spot in the State competition, which will be held on Thursday, March 22, in Daytona Beach.

MATHCOUNTS Team Advances To States: Liberty Middle School’s MATHCOUNTS team finished second out of 17 teams at the Regional competition on Feb. 2, earning the team a spot in the State competition, which will be held on Thursday, March 22, in Daytona Beach.

“Liberty has been participating in MATHCOUNTS for the past 10 or so years,” says coach Melissa Grier, a Liberty math teacher. “We have advanced to the State competition the last three years straight and are known in MATHCOUNTS circles as the team to always beat.”

Eighth-grade student Charley Cheng also finished second overall in the individual competition. “He actually had the highest individual score but lost in a head-to-head competition with the second place finisher,” explains Melissa.

Charley and eighth grade student Derek Wu also were on last year’s team, which went to the States, too.

Seventh-grade student Shreya Gullapalli and sixth-grade student Vignesh Saravanan also are on the team.

“These kids are wonderful,” says Melissa. “They are incredibly humble and they all share a love for mathematics.”

The MATHCOUNTS team from Benito Middle School on Cross Creek Blvd. finished in sixth place, with Saanvi Prasad, a seventh-grader, earning the sixth highest individual finish.