Schools in Pasco County will be back in session this fall, but what that means and looks like for your student will be up to you.
On Thursday, superintendent Kurt Browning announced that parents will have three choices when classes resume in August.
Traditional: Just what it says â campuses will re-open and students will return to classes, just like before the Covid-19 pandemic shut schools down in March. There will be special social distancing measures taken, and children who bus to school will be expected to wear a mask, though wearing masks will be optional on campuses.
mySchool: This is an option for students not yet comfortable returning to campus, but who want to remain connected to their school. Students will attend scheduled classes every day, with synchronous class meetings. Elementary students can expect daily lessons with face to face connections, while secondary students can expect daily face-to-face connections for every period. This is expected to take most of the pressure and responsibility off parents who have had to take on the role of teacher in many cases.
Virtual: A full-time virtual school where students work on assignments during non-traditional hours, with contact with teachers and classmates via technology.
âThereâs an option here for everyone,â Browning says.
Parents are being asked to study the information online at pasco.k12.fl.us, and then choose what they believe will be best for their child by filling out an online form right HERE.
At Pasco school sites across the county, including Quail Hollow (above) and New River elementary schools, more than 1,000,000 meals were distributed to out-of-school students. (Photo: Charmaine George)
In early March, as they do every year, Pasco County schools started putting together plans to feed students who wouldnât be in school during the 2019-20 spring break.
Little did they know, however, that shortly after they started preparing, the decision to keep students home from school due to Covid-19 fears would come down on April 13âŠand then be extendedâŠand then, finally, extended right through to the end of the academic year.
âIt just came out of the blue,â says Betsy Kuhn, the school districtâs assistant superintendent for support services. âWe had to pull inventory (to feed students) from all over the county. It was crazy.â
What started as seven sites distributing bags of food to students soon grew to 28 sites and some additional bus stop pick-up sites.
Instead of a few thousand meals for the week of spring break, the ongoing pandemic resulted in more than 1 million meals being handed out to students across Pasco County over two-plus months â by food service employees, school administrators, teachers and volunteers.
The official total heading into the summer: 1,095,537 meals served.
âI definitely could not have imagined weâd get to that number,â says Kuhn. âEvery week I would write down the numbers, and then last week I started looking at it and thought, âGosh, that has to be close to a million meals.â
In Wesley Chapel, meals were handed out at Quail Hollow (QHE) and New River elementary schools. At New River, more than 10,000 meals were served on May 19 (which included additional meals for the following week, when there were no pick-ups because of Memorial Day weekend), bringing the total served at that location to 70,942.
That last week, nearly 10,000 meals were served at Quail Hollow â which wasnât a site the first two weeks â to bring its total to 58,942 meals served.
Kara Smucker, the principal at QHE, lauded the effort by the Pasco School District on such short notice.
âThis is a big task, and there has been so much guidance and support,â she said. âI appreciate all the hard work for all the kids in Pasco County.â
In addition to food pick-ups, the District also organized food drives and distributed fresh produce donated by local farmers at impromptu Farm Fresh Pop-Ups.
Some of the food distributed at a Farm Fresh Pop-Up earlier this month at Wesley Chapel High.
At its first pop-up on May 6, more than 30,000 ears of corn were handed out in two hours at Pasco High in Dade City and at Pine View and Chasco middle schools in Land OâLakes and Port Richey, respectively..
The next week, at pop-ups at sites across the county, including one on May 14 at Cypress Creek High off Old Pasco Rd., hundreds of 10-pound boxes of a medley of vegetables were distributed and exhausted within an hour.
The most recent Farm Fresh Pop-ups were held at Pasco, Fivay (in Hudson) and Wesley Chapel high schools. More than 1,500 boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables were distributed, including all 540 available at Wesley Chapel.
âNo matter what we got, people responded,â says Pasco County Schools spokesperson Steve Hegarty.
Food drives, at the Wesley Chapel Samâs Club and at the Target in Trinity, produced 500 boxes of nonperishable items to go with donated turkey breasts.
Kuhn estimates that food distribution during the summer, which started last week, will be higher than usual. But after distributing more than 1-million meals and countless boxes of nonperishable foods and produce, the School District is ready for the challenge.
âItâs a good feeling to have done what weâve done,â Kuhn says. âWe have a lot to be proud of. And the people have been very very appreciative. Just really grateful. Itâs been great.â
Pascoâs schools were just among the many local organizations and groups distributing food during these economically frightening times. Pasco County Commission chairman Mike Moore and District 38 State Rep. Randy Maggard hosted a drive-through food distribution site in the JC Penney parking lot at the Shops at Wiregrass May 20, with Farm Share â which distributes produce and meat donated by the stateâs farmers â providing nearly 35,000 pounds of food to more than 700 cars.
The food included chicken, rice, milk, cereal, granola bars, canned foods and fresh fruits and vegetables.
âIt was pretty incredible,â Moore said. âIt was very humbling to see the need out there, and it was nice to be able to help.â
Wesley Chapel seniors celebrated their graduation on June 1 at The Grove.
As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, the 2019-20 school year was forced to come to a premature end.
Senior year, which can be the best and sometimes most eventful year of a teenagerâs life, ended with a whimper, instead of a bang.
High school sports, proms and Grad Bashes were canceled. Yearbooks were passed out through open car windows by folks wearing masks. Graduations were postponed until August. Final goodbyes among classmates would have to wait.
As the mother of a Wiregrass Ranch High senior, and the president of the Pasco County Council PTA, Denise Nicholas found it all to be a shame. So, she decided to do something.
With the help of all the PTAs across the county, a host of volunteers and the determination to give all of Pascoâ seniors a sendoff, Nicholas and a team of helpers organized a car parade for the outgoing seniors for every school in the county.
âI brought the idea to my (PTA) board and they were very excited about it,â Nicholas says. âAnd, we found people to help at each of the schools that do not have PTAs. The schools that do not have PTAs, we found people to help at each of those schools. We really wanted to give the same experience to every senior in the county.â
Here in Wesley Chapel, The Grove shopping center enthusiastically stepped up and offered a parade route in front of its shopping plaza after a few other sites declined.
Cypress Creek and Wiregrass Ranch high schools had their parades â which featured decorated cars and large groups of friends and family cheering along the parade route â on May 19 and 20, respectively, while Wesley Chapel Highâs parade, which was delayed by rain, was held June 1.
âObviously with the pandemic, the (way school ended) was very saddening for our students and their families,â said Monica Ilse, Ed.D., assistant superintendent for Pasco Schools. âBut, Denise reached out and wanted to do something to provide some community support for the seniors, which we appreciate beyond words.â
Nicholas had no shortage of volunteers to pull off the project. Pasco County Commissioners Mike Moore and Ron Oakley agreed to introduce the seniors and serve as the parade emcees, local professional photographers Jess Montgomery and Paul Gigante took pictures, Makayla Gulash (aka DJ Night Mixer) provided the music, Troy Stevenson (of Acme On The Go multimedia) also contributed video trucks at each event, and former Tampa Bay Bucs tight end (and father to a Wiregrass Ranch sophomore) Anthony Becht also donated time and services.
Ilse said the county hopes to be able to hold traditional graduations in August at the Yuengling Center on the campus of the University of South Florida, but that will depend upon the CDC and the status of the pandemic. If they canât be held, she thinks the car parades made a nice send off.
âI took my niece to the Wiregrass Ranch one, and she had a great time,â Ilse said. âIt was a lot of fun.â
Nicholas said the smiling senior faces across the county helped end their final years on a happy note, which was her primary goal. âBryce (her son) thought it was a great idea, but he had no idea how much he would enjoy it,â Nicholas says. âSeeing how his face lit up, to be able to drive in the parade and hear the horns and the cheering and see the signsâŠ.it was worth every second.â
Kids squealed with delight upon arriving at the brand-new inclusive playground designed for those with virtually any type of disability at the Wesley Chapel District Park. There were swings and tubes and things to sit and spin on, a soft, cushioned floor to walk on and roll over and lots of bright colors.
It was all theirs.
The glee in their faces was contagious, and it was exactly the moment Pasco County Board of County Commissioners chair Mike Moore had envisioned when he first pitched the idea to the countyâs Parks and Recreation department.
The kids werenât the only ones overwhelmed.
âIâll be honest with you, when the kids first came out here, I was watching and I had to walk away because it was a little overwhelming,â Comm. Moore said. âI had a couple of tears in my eyes, I really did. This is a miracle.â
***
On December 4, a large gathering of overjoyed kids, dedicated caregivers and teachers, Pasco County government dignitaries and generous donors from the Wesley Chapel Rotary Club, the Lennar Foundation and AdventHealth Wesley Chapel took a few snips at the ribbon cutting, officially opening Pascoâs first-ever inclusive playground.
It was a perfectly sunny day, with a slight chill in the air. But, most everyone there had their hearts warmed by the excitement of the kids, most of whom arrived on a bus from the Exceptional Student Education (ESE) programs from John Long Middle School and Wiregrass Ranch Elementary.
âIâm having a ball,â shouted Eric Piburn, a terminally ill 13-year-old in glasses, gloves, a knit cap and a face mask. Piburn, who needs a heart and double lung transplant, excitedly described his experience as he swung back and forth from a disc swing (that looked like an over-sized basket), the tube from his oxygen tank swaying along with him.
âIâve loved swings since I was little,â he exclaimed. âI never ever ever ever ever ever want to leave. Ever.â
Another Long student walked around giving everyone a hug. Others wide-eyed but trepidatiously wandered from ride to ride, looking to find something they enjoyed.
âThis is really cool,â said Deborah Collin, assistant principal in charge of ESE services at Long. âI keep saying to myself, where can we get some of this stuff?â
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For every 1,000 children in Pasco County, there are 85 who have some type of special needs. Countywide, the Pasco County School District says there are about 16,000 children with special needs. Collin says there are 55 children in the ESE program at her school, spread over three different classifications of disability, with five teachers and eight instructional aides.
While they have adaptive physical education for the students, it is confined to a room.
âItâs still not enough movement or variety,â she said.
Which is why the playground is such a gamechanger for children with disabilities.
âThis is huge,â said Barbara Hayes, a physical therapist with Pasco County Schools for 22 years. âThere arenât a lot of areas for those children to access. You can see the smiles on their faces. This gives them an opportunity to play with children more at their developmental level. This is a wonderful thing and very well done.â
Collin said one of her students, seventh grader Zakyla McKenzie, spends a lot of time playing with a plastic bottle. It fulfills some of her sensory needs, with its texture and the sound it makes when squeezed. But, itâs been the only exercise she usually gets each day.
At the inclusive playground, however, Zakyla was able to find something she liked more.
âShe was having such a good time on the swing, she did not want to get off,â said Nellie Reilly, a behavioral specialist at Long who seemed as overjoyed as many of the students.
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While many area parks may be compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines, few truly meet the standards of what proponents consider to be inclusivity. To do so requires wider pathways and easier-to-navigate surfaces, activity panels that are at ground height, larger swings with more back support and sensory elements that include touch and music.
There are multiple swing sets on the playground, an inclusive spinner that allows kids in wheelchairs to have a merry-go-round experience with their friends, a tube to crawl through â âI like to pretend Iâm a cat!â said Eric â and four springy chairs. The surface throughout the playground is made of rubber and, combined with the spread-out rides, allows easy access for wheelchair-bound kids to move around and interact with others.
In the spring, a butterfly garden, which will be tended to by the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel, should be in full bloom.
âI didnât see anybody that didnât find something that worked for them,â Collin said.
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The inclusive park is the first of its kind in Pasco County and one that Moore said he hopes to replicate in other places. It was not, however, your typical project for the county â it was introduced, funded, approved, designed and built in less than five months, which is light speed by traditional governmental standards.
As a volunteer coach at the District Park for a variety of sports, Moore had for many years seen kids who could run fast, jump high and were able to revel in what the park had to offer.
However, he also had seen the kids who couldnât, those relegated to the sidelines because of a disability. The park wasnât for everyone, he realized, and he said the thought bothered him and prompted him to try and change that situation.
After a few months of research, Moore introduced the idea to Keith Wiley, Pascoâs director of Parks and Recreation, earlier this year. Wiley had been thinking similarly â he already had been planning some special needs camps for the county.
****
To fund the project, since it wasnât in the countyâs budget, Moore turned to the 53-member Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel â of which he is an honorary member â which just happened to be looking for a big project, and the club agreed to donate $50,000 for the playground.
Chris Casella, the Rotary Clubâs current president, told the ribbon-cutting ceremony crowd of roughly 100 that he was motivated by his own experiences as a kid, and the times spent at the park with friends and family.
âToday,â he said, âthis can be a reality for so many families from this area that are going to be able to bring children to this park and have memories that will last a lifetime.â
The Lennar Foundation, the homebuilderâs charitable arm, donated another $50,000, and Advent Health Wesley Chapel chipped in another $25,000.
In August, the county commission voted 5-0 to approve roughly $215,000 in public funding to cover the rest of the project. Ground was broken in September. The ribbon was cut in December.
It was money well spent. As the kids slowly filed back to their school bus, and the adults headed back to work, Eric Piburn continued to rock back and forth on the disc swing, still planning to never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever leave.
Wharton High is home to two of rifleryâs sharpest shooters, and both have Olympic aspirations.
When Matt Sanchez signed his college athletic scholarship papers with West Virginia University on Nov. 14, it didnât make the nightly sports news, but it was a big deal.
It was as big as a high school football player signing a college scholarship to compete at Alabama or Ohio State. Or a basketball player signing with Kentucky or Duke.
It was history.
Sanchez and his Wharton teammate, Ben Salas, who signed with North Carolina State University in Raleigh, are believed to be the first high school kids in Tampa Bay to sign scholarships for rifle, a varsity college and Olympic sport.
While Salas is going to join a young, growing riflery program, Sanchez will be joining arguably the best shooting school in the country.
The Mountaineers have won 19 NCAA national team championships, producing 25 individual NCAA championships, 65 All-Americans and 13 Olympians.
Sanchez hopes to No. 14.
Sanchez has already made a name for himself in the world of Olympic-style shooting.
At just 17 years old, the Heritage Isles resident has spent the last year traveling the world to compete in World Cups and World Championship competitions as a member of the USA Shooting national team. Because of his age, Sanchez currently is part of the junior national team.
âMost recently, I competed in September in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the World Cup,â says Sanchez, âand Iâve also been to Germany and Austria four times each, and Switzerland, Korea and China.â
Sanchez participates in two types of competitions. One is smallbore, which is shooting a .22 caliber rifle in three positions â standing, kneeling and prone.
The other is shooting an air rifle, which is a type of pellet gun, taking 60 shots while standing.
Jayme Shipley, who represented the U.S. in the 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympic games, placing sixth in the 2000 Olympics in the womenâs air rifle competition, is Sanchez’s coach. A resident of Naples, she coaches a handful of high school aged precision shooters throughout the state, and Sanchez is one of her best students.
In the smallbore event, he participated in the first round of Olympic Trials in October, where he finished in 11th place. However, a second round of competition will be held next spring âto make sure they donât get someone who just has one good day,â Shipley says.
Only two men will make it onto the Olympic team in each event, but Shipley says Sanchez is currently in contention, and his chances are probably better to make the team in the air rifle event, where he often shoots scores that rank well among not just his teammates on the juniors, but also among the adult men.
Those trials begin December 6 at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO, with a second portion of competition happening in February.
Shooting has been an event in the Olympics since the first modern games in 1896. In fact, the first medal given out at every Olympics is in shooting.
âWhen I first started working with Matt almost 5 years ago, we looked at the 2024 Olympics as a goal,â says Shipley. âBut, heâs excelled so fast that he has a really good chance with this one.â
* * *
Incredibly, when Sanchez attends the Olympic Trials for air rifle, he wonât be the only Wharton High senior to compete.
Salas, a 17-year-old Live Oak Preserve resident, will compete as well.
While Salas hasnât made the national team and didnât compete in the Olympic trials for smallbore, he also trains with Shipley and also has his eyes on an Olympic prize someday.
Salas has only been shooting precision rifle since last October, but has progressed quickly enough to earn the opportunity to compete in the Olympic trials for air rifle.
Ben Salas (left) and Matt Sanchez
A relative newcomer, Salasâ growth as a shooter has been accelerated in part due to working alongside Sanchez, a veteran of the sport.
Sanchez began shooting with his dad when he was only 10 years old. The family lived in Orlando and went to a rifle club on weekends, just for fun. Sanchez entered a few competitions at the club, noticing that others showed up in some âweirdâ gear. He says he started to realize there were things he could improve on and excel at, so he started getting his own gear and working on his technique.
âI started to win little competitions, which led to state championships,â he says. âBeing able to win stuff really piqued my interest.â
At 13, Sanchez began to take the sport seriously. In 2017, his dadâs job change brought him to Wharton for the beginning of his sophomore year.
âWhen I got here, I saw they had a rifle team in NJROTC,â says Sanchez, referring to the high schoolâs Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program. âIt gave me more time to shoot during school and made things a lot easier, training-wise.â
His presence has transformed the schoolâs program.
âMatt has been a mentor to our whole team,â says Chief Wayne Boknevitz, a Naval sciences instructor who also coaches the schoolâs rifle teams. âHe got our whole precision team up and running and has elevated the entire marksmanship team.â
Boknevitz says the school previously had âsporterâ level rifle teams, but not âprecisionâ level. Sanchez worked with Boknevitz to get a team together, recruiting other students to invest in the expensive gear, while Boknevitz borrowed guns from another school.
âMatt took time from his own practice to help everyone else with form and micro-adjustments to the guns,â explains Boknevitz. âThe knowledge he shared allowed us to go to Navy nationals last year.â
* * *
Unlike Sanchez, Salas was first an NJROTC cadet, interested in pursuing a military career. He joined the schoolâs rifle team for fun. On the sporter team, Salas set a school record, and Boknevitz encouraged him to join the schoolâs new precision team.
At first Salas was reluctant â he says his parents werenât sure they wanted to spend the money on gear â but Sanchez encouraged him, explaining that precision shooting is a sport that can actually lead to a scholarship at a university. Salas says at that point, his parents were in.
âI was hoping to get into a Division II school, but my personal records kept going up very fast in a very short period of time,â says Salas.
He says it was earlier this year when he saw how well he was placing around peers who have been shooting much longer than him and wanted to take it a step further.
âI realized I could probably make the Olympics if I practice hard enough,â he says. âIâm really shooting for 2024.â
Salas is happy to give a lot of the credit to Sanchez.
âBefore he came to our school there was no precision team, so if he had gone to another school, I would have stayed on the sporter team and all of this never would have happened,â Salas says.
For the past year, the pair have trained together before and after school at Wharton using paper targets, and at home using highly sensitive Olympic-style electronic targets.
They travel once or twice a month to a specialized range â of which there are very few in the state and none locally â typically going to one in south Hollywood in South Florida, where they spend seven or eight hours a day practicing their sport with Shipley.
âThe two of them together are great friends and they are great training partners,â says Shipley. âThey push each other. Plus, theyâre both a joy to be around, just the funniest kids ever.â
* * *
While their eyes may be temporarily set on the Olympic prize as the Trials draw near, both boys say their more immediate goal has been getting a prized college scholarship.
âMost guys who make the (Olympic) team are in their 20s and some top shooters are in their mid-30s, so you can do it for a long time and have a long career,â explains Shipley. âWhen theyâre so young, my goal as a coach is to get them into school with a scholarship, because school is expensive, and the sport is expensive.â
Both Wildcats hit the bullseye when it came to receiving scholarships.
Sanchez can play a hand in restoring WVU to the top of the college ranks. The Mountaineers 19 titles is No. 1 all-time, but they havenât won one since capturing their fifth straight title 2017.
Salas will follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, who played football at NC State. He will be a big part of getting the Wolfpack on the college rifle map.
âAt first, the program was just a club,â Ben says. âBut, they just got a new coach and sheâs really stepping up and making the program bigger and proving that NC State is a good shooting school. Iâm really happy to go there and help them.â
There are only 30 universities that give scholarships in shooting, but none in Florida, although Shipley says USF used to have one of the best shooting teams in the country, with three Olympians.
Boknevitz says that to his knowledge, itâs the first time in Hillsborough County that any student has been signed to an NCAA shooting team and participated in signing day, taking pride that Wharton had not one, but two, students sign.
One way or another, both Wildcats have bright futures.
âIâm really excited for the Olympic trials, because Iâve seen what scores I can put up if I shoot my best,â Salas says. âBut Iâm more excited for college because I know thatâs a guarantee.â
