The lunchrooms and the walkway and courtyard at Cypress Creek Middle High School were finally filled by students as the new school, while others across Pasco County were back in business on Aug. 14. (Photo: Pasco County Schools)
Among the thousands of students who went back to school in Pasco County on August 14, more than 1,500 of them spent their first day at Wesley Chapel’s newest school, Cypress Creek Middle High School, which is located off Old Pasco Rd.
Cypress Creek Middle High was expected to open with about 1,500 students, but actually had 1,603 students show up on the first day. The school’s capacity is 1,958 students, so it still has some room to grow.
The new school was needed to relieve crowding at not only Wiregrass Ranch High and John Long Middle schools, but also has students who previously were zoned for Sunlake and Wesley Chapel high schools, as well as Weightman and Rushe middle schools.
All students at the new school follow the same bell schedule, from 7:25 a.m. to 1:50 p.m.
“The first few days have been outstanding,” said Cypress Creek principal Carin Hetzler-Nettles. “Our students are enjoying their new environment and are learning the layout of the campus. Other than the normal situation of getting used to the routine, and watching to see where we need to change procedures with car loop or bus loop, etc., we have truly had an amazing first few days.”
Hetzler-Nettles also said that the campus was filled with Parent Teacher Student Association members helping students find their classes, and even Pasco Superintendent of Schools Kurt Browning was on hand to help welcome the students and direct them to their new classes.
Cypress Creek Middle/High. (Photo: Cypress Creek Howler)
“It takes a village to open a new school,” added Hetzler-Nettles, “and our community has just been so welcoming and helpful! We couldn’t have done it without them and are excited for our future!”
Among those who helped get the teachers set up in their new digs at the school on July 26 were volunteers from the Pasco Education foundation and the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel.
At Long Middle School, one of the schools that lost students to Cypress Creek, principal Christine Wolff said, “You always miss the kids on campus that you have grown attached to, and my wish for all of our former students is to have a good adjustment and get excited for learning, and take that excitement for learning with them wherever they are.”
She says that while Long’s enrollment numbers are down slightly (1,488 students were enrolled on opening day this year, versus 1,810 last year), the school is still over capacity because of all the growth in the area.
“We did have a smooth start to the school year,” Wolff says, “And, just like all of our Pasco County schools, we’re focused on meeting our school improvement goals and making sure they (the teachers and students) are meeting the learning standards in the classroom.”
And at Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH), the 10-period schedule is a thing of the past, as many former students have new homes at either Cypress Creek Middle High or WCH.
A contentious rezoning process last year was designed to ease the overcrowding at Wiregrass Ranch while also filling the new school.
“We had a great start,’’ said WRH principal Robyn White. “We are back to the 7-period day, and while there are a lot of students on campus at the same time, it is manageable. We started day one with a little over 2,200, which was a decrease of 300 from last year.”
CORRECTION: We inadvertently omitted New River Elementary from our chart of Pasco County school grades in our last issue. We’re really sorry about that, because principal Lynn Pabst and the students and teachers at New River earned a “B” grade for the third consecutive year.
School grades have been announced for the 2016-17 school year and, of the 12 public schools located in Wesley Chapel, all either maintained their grades from the 2015-16 school year, or went up by at least one letter grade.
Letter grades are assigned by the State of Florida Department of Education (DoE), based on statewide standardized assessments. High schools also have a graduation component, based on how many students graduate in four years. The letter grades then reflect the percentage of points received, of the total number of available points.
The biggest jump in local school grades was at Quail Hollow Elementary (QHE). For the 2016-17 school year, QHE received an “A” from the DoE, a big boost from the C it received last year, in 2015-16.Prior to that, the school had been closed for two years for remodeling.
But, QHE isn’t the only school that improved. Veterans and Seven Oaks elementaries both improved from B to A, while Watergrass Elementary improved from C to B.
For the other elementary schools, Sand Pine and Wesley Chapel both maintained their A ratings, while Double Branch maintained its B. Wiregrass Elementary received its first-ever grade since it opened last fall, a B.
Wesley Chapel High (WCH) raised its grade back up to a B again after last year’s grade dipped to a C for the first time in the school’s history.
“I was ecstatic,” says Carin Hetzler-Nettles, who was the principal at WCH until she was named principal of the new Cypress Creek Middle High School in January. “It’s fun to see that grade improve, and it’s exciting for the community, staff and kids at the school.”
The other Wesley Chapel high school, Wiregrass Ranch (WRH), maintained the B rating it had last year.
Dr. John Long Middle School maintained its A from the previous year, and Weightman Middle School kept its B.
While the school grading system has many critics, the grades are widely used by parents as a measure of how well their child’s school is performing.
Hetzler-Nettles is among many who say that school grades are just one of many factors to be considered when attempting to measure a school’s performance. This is partly because a different group of students is tested each year.
“In high school, tenth grade is our heavy testing year,” she says. “Next year, we’ll test a completely different group of tenth grade students. There is a human factor.”
And, she says, the specific criteria that make up the school’s grade also are different from year to year.
“There are always things that change,” says Hetzler-Nettles. “The grading changes every year at the state level, and then we tend to see trends. This year, it seems like the schools are on an upswing.”
Carin Hetzler-Nettles is the principal of the new Cypress Creek Middle High School and was previously principal of Wesley Chapel High, where she earned Pasco County’s Secondary Principal of the Year in 2012.
We spoke with Hetzler-Nettles during staff training week at Cypress Creek, located off Old Pasco Rd. As the entire staff worked together to create the culture of the new school (which is set to open to students on Pasco’s first day of classes for the 2017-18 school year, on Monday, August 14), Hetzler-Nettles reflected on all the work that’s being done to get the school ready for its first class of students. Here are some highlights from that conversation:
Neighborhood News: How different is this process of opening a new school, compared with the typical summer routine at other county middle and high schools?
Carin Hetzler-Nettles: Really different! Every principal does a lot of work this time of year, but it’s very rare to have this opportunity to be side-by-side with the entire staff, building something new.
We’re setting the stage, creating our culture here. We’re setting our school-wide expectations and motto, and talking about what a Cypress Creek “Coyote” looks like.
An aerial view of the sprawling new Cypress Creek Middle High School campus on Old Pasco Rd., near Overpass Rd.
Cypress Creek will be a pilot program for “trauma informed care,” so we had training for that. We learned about ourselves as a staff and to be mindful that everyone comes in with their own trauma (which could be something minor), and we react in different ways. When a student acts out, it’s because of something in their life, and it’s on us to figure that out, and then to build resilience, grit and perseverance. Those are life skills.
On the last day of our staff retreat (which was earlier this month), our teachers will get their schedules and find out their classrooms, which they’re so excited about. Then, as teams, they’ll head out into the community to commit random acts of kindness. We want to say “hi” to our fellow community members and tell them we’re hoping for their support.
NN: What’s your favorite thing about the campus itself?
CHN: The look of this school reminds me of a community college. It has beautiful brick paver accents. There are amazing (floor-to-ceiling) windows in the classrooms. There’s so much natural light and every classroom has a great view. We are the only high school in the county that will have a rubberized track, so we’ll be able to host some big meets. We also have a large cafeteria and an enormous band room, and the most beautiful gym floor I’ve ever seen.
We had been working out of two classrooms at Quail Hollow Elementary. To move into the new campus, we needed to have the wi-fi working, a place to sit at and something to sit on. That happened last week, so this is our home now. The trailers will go away, but we will have a district employee and construction subcontractors finishing up around campus, for probably six more months.
NN: What are you most excited about?
CHN: I am most excited about the opportunities for students. It’s so cool to have middle and high school students together. I have seen the power of kids talking to kids, and of kids showing leadership, like when eleventh grade students help ninth grade students transition. They explain, “This is why you need to do your homework,” or even say, “Let me sit with you at lunch.”
I see that happening.
Outside of school, you don’t necessarily see that part of them all the time, but we see that kids have big hearts and truly want to help others.
We have a “Pack leader” program where, over the summer, eleventh graders will be trained in leadership and eighth graders will be trained in peer counseling. Then, those trained students will be scheduled into core classes in the lower grades.
So, an eleventh grade student might be scheduled into a ninth grade English class and they are the “Pack leader” in that class. We partner them up in one of their strong subjects to help kids in that class. They might set up a texting app to remind the class that there’s a test tomorrow, or take kids outside the class to help them, or just talk, if they had a fight with a friend, for example.
We’re trying to help kids stay engaged. The Pack leader might say the same things as the teacher, but in a different way.
So many things divert kids’ attention, whether it’s that they don’t see the purpose of school, they’re looking for fun, or they’re making bad choices. It’s on us as educators to engage them and find what works for them. It’s different with every kid, so there are a lot of different ways to do that.
NN: How deep are your roots in Pasco County schools?
CHN: I am a product of Pasco County Schools. I graduated from Land O’ Lakes High. I started my career in 1996 as an ESE teacher at River Ridge Middle School. I spent a year in Hillsborough County but found it very different and came back to open Mitchell in 2000. I got my educational leadership certificate and became assistant principal, then became principal at Wesley Chapel High in 2009.
I’ve actually worked with people who were my teachers in high school. When I was at Mitchell, I became an administrator and one of the teachers there was a teacher I had in high school. The same thing happened when I was principal at Wesley Chapel. I was principal of a teacher who taught me.
NN: How does the size of Cypress Creek Middle High School compare to other campuses in the area?
CHN: We are starting with 650 high school students, which is very small. The next smallest high school in Pasco County is 1,100 students, so we’re about half the size of that. It’s almost unheard of.
Four Cypress Creek Middle High teachers from the school’s Athletic Dept. showed up at our office on June 22, and all four were obviously excited to talk about the opening of the new school.
But, our middle school has 850 students, which is pretty typical. As those middle schoolers age up, we will end up being the size of a traditional high school, so we will grow quickly. We will have about 1,500 at the high school and 900 at the middle school (in the next few years).
In about four years, we hope to have a completely separate middle school built adjacent to this school. (Right now,) Cypress Creek Middle High School is a way to relieve a booming population that is necessary at our feeder schools. We’re embracing it as a unique opportunity to create a dynamic culture.
We’re doing vertical teaming, so sixth through eleventh grade teachers in each department (math, for example) will meet every week. There will be no “they didn’t learn this in middle school.” We will have a seamless campus and curriculum. And, when that day comes when there’s a separate middle school campus, we expect that culture will bleed over into that campus, as well.
NN: What do you want your students to know as they get ready to come to Cypress Creek?
CHN: Life is full of possibilities. That’s how I approach every day. I know parents teach their kids they can do whatever they put their mind to, and that’s what’s being instilled in our school. It’s easy to be worried or concerned about having sixth through twelfth graders on the same campus and sharing buses, and it’s right to have concerns. But, we are planning for that. We already have schools with this model.
We can also look at what an amazing situation it is that a middle schooler has access to criminal justice, business, and journalism classes. If they want to take Spanish or American Sign Language, they can walk across campus and take it. They have easy access to accelerated courses. They don’t have to do it online. It’s a great opportunity and it’s very exciting to me.
It’s easy to stay comfortable. I loved working at Wesley Chapel with those kids and teachers and parents and staff, but I took a leap of faith to come here, and so did all the other staff. We are looking at the possibilities and all the doors that will open for all of these students. It’s gonna be really cool.
Wiregrass Ranch High co-valedictorian Lauren Payne will follow her sister Emily to the University of Florida.
Lauren Payne says she wasn’t necessarily trying to earn the title of valedictorian of the 2017 class at Wiregrass Ranch High, but that’s where her hard work and smart choices landed her.
She recently graduated as co-valedictorian, with a weighted GPA of 4.79.
“I chose my classes based on what I thought was going to be interesting,” Lauren says, not with having the toughest schedule in mind. “I took a mix of AP (Advanced Placement) classes and dual enrollment, and they were all good.” She says her favorites — among courses such as AP calculus B/C, government and statistics — were her dual enrollment world literature and AP biology classes. What did she take for fun? “Oceanography and anthropology were like electives,” she says.
“Lauren has a really strong work ethic,” says her mom, Janet. “It is really important for her to try her best and challenge herself.”
Lauren’s natural drive to try her hardest has earned her some pretty impressive credentials. For example, she’s a National Merit Scholarship winner. This makes her eligible for a program called the Benacquisto scholarship, where the State of Florida provides a financial award equal to the cost of attendance at a Florida school, including tuition and fees, on-campus room and board, books, supplies, travel and miscellaneous expenses remaining after usingaward given by the National Merit Scholar program and the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship program.
Lauren is taking her Benacquisto scholarship to the University of Florida in Gainesville, the school from which her older sister Emily just graduated. Emily was WRH’s salutatorian in 2013.
“I chose UF because I’ve been visiting my older sister there since middle school,” she says, “and I always felt like I belonged.” UF also offered her its Presidential Scholarship, which offers $5,000, $8,000 (gold) and $10,000 (platinum) per year to in-state, high-achieving students.
Her plan is to major in microbiology and cell science and eventually work in the medical field. “It’s exciting to be on my own for the first time,” says Lauren, who has lived in the same house in Meadow Pointe her entire life, attending Sand Pine Elementary and John Long Middle School before WRH.
While she’s following her older sister’s footsteps into college, she also followed her athletically. Lauren watched Emily run cross country in high school, so she started running in middle school. Lauren became part of a team at WRH that won the Sunshine Athletic Conference Eastern Division championship this year.
“I looked up to my sister, so I thought running cross country looked like so much fun,” Lauren says. “Once I started, I really liked the coach and all the girls on the team, so I stuck with it, even though it was a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
She adds, “There are some days for everyone where it’s just a really rough run and it doesn’t feel fun or easy. There’s a point where you have to decide whether I’m going to stick through this. The experience with all the other girls on the team made the hard days worth it.”
In addition to being a scholar and an athlete, Lauren also was active on campus at WRH, as a class Senator all four years, president of Mu Alpha Theta (math honor society), a Ranch ambassador (representing the school at different events such as orientation and open house) and a member of both the National Honor Society and the Science National Honor Society.
“She grew up liking to try a lot of different things, such as dance, swimming, and playing a couple of different instruments,’’ said her mother Janet. In fact, Janet says Lauren still plays violin but had to stop playing in the school’s orchestra.
“Orchestra is a big-time commitment,” Janet said, “Lauren had to make choices. She even did cheerleading for her first two years, but couldn’t keep doing all of those activities, so she had to make decisions about how to best spend her time.”
While Janet is proud of Lauren, she doesn’t seem at all surprised at her success. “Since Lauren was pretty young, she’s always had a curiosity about how things work and has been enthusiastic about school,’’ Janet said. “We’ve had great public schools and great teachers who have nurtured her along the way. Those things came together: good schools, good teachers, she gets a lot of support and she tries hard.”
Wesley Chapel High valedictorian Samantha Politano is congratulated by Pasco County school superintendent Kurt Browning and School Board member Cynthia Armstrong as Politano receives one of several scholarships.
When Samantha Politano steps on to the stage to speak to Wesley Chapel High’s graduating class of 2017 on May 26, it will be the culmination of a dream she’s had since the third grade, when the letter “A” first appeared on her report card.
It was at that time — when she saw not just one, but all As on that report card — that she says she became determined to always get straight As, and to become her class valedictorian. And now, she’s done it.
With a weighted GPA of 4.77, she has the privilege of the title, and the responsibility of making the speech.
“I’m really excited about it,” Samantha says, “I’ve been thinking about it since third grade, so I feel like it’s a lot of pressure.”
At the same time she’s receiving her high school diploma, she’s also earning her Associate of Arts (A.A.) degree from Pasco Hernando State College, thanks to dual enrollment classes she’s been taking for the last three years. She’ll be recognized as an “honors graduate” for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in her college classes when she walks across the stage at that graduation ceremony.
While she’s been busy studying, doing her homework and keeping her grades up, Samantha also has been committed to extracurricular activities as an officer in seven organizations. She’s not only student body president at WCH, she’s also vice president of the PHSC chapter of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society.
Samantha also received the Girl Scouts Gold Award, the highest award given by that organization. When she earned it in 2016, she was the only Gold Award recipient in Pasco County that year. She says she was an active Girl Scout for 12 years, and the project to earn the award was to make Wells Rd. — where Wesley Chapel Elementary, Weightman Middle and Wesley Chapel High schools are located — safer.
Currently, Samantha is planning to attend Florida State University in Tallahassee, where she’ll be in the Honors College.
“My parents never went to college, so I’ve always dreamed of going to college,” she says. “When I started at Wesley Chapel Elementary, I thought that was college.”
Samantha says her parents’ story is an inspiration to her. She looks up to her mom, who she says is, “so organized and gets everything done without getting distracted; she motivates me.”
She also says that her dad’s hands are a reminder of why she works so hard to be successful. “Dad used to be a gas fitter and he had to work hard, digging deep holes,” she says. “His hands are so rough. I want to work hard mentally so my family and I don’t have to work hard with our hands.”
Samantha is still on the waiting list at both Harvard and Yale, and should find out by the end of May if she’ll be accepted into either of those Ivy League universities. If she does end up at FSU, she has earned so many scholarships that she will have the cost of her education covered, and then some. She earned a prestigious scholarship for students who have overcome significant adversity, called the Horatio Alger Scholarship. She also was named a national semi-finalist from the Elks National Foundation for a “most valuable student” award, plus she was awarded scholarships from the Mary and Bob Sierra Family Foundation, the Florida PTA, Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative and from FSU.
Ultimately, she says she hopes to become a lawyer. “It’s unfair that lawyers charge so much and that low-income families can’t afford a lawyer,” Samantha explains. “I’d like to advocate for low-income families and help them.”
Because her scholarships will cover four years of education, “I’ll probably take my time,” she says. “Because I already have my A.A., it would be too easy to just do one major.” She’s planning to study both English and Biology, following a track for marine biology, and thinks she might study abroad.
Samantha says that, to apply for law school, she can have any degree, so her choice to study marine biology is purely for fun and the experience of learning more about something she loves. “I won’t be using that as a lawyer,” she says. “I’m just passionate about it. It’s going to be really enjoyable. I think more people should do things just because they enjoy them.”
