After two years of remodeling and construction, one Wesley Chapel elementary school is much more than just a shell of its former self, as it prepares to reopen for the 2015-16 school year.
During a Community Open House on August 21, parents, students and teachers toured the remodeled Quail Hollow Elementary (QHE, located north of S.R. 54 on Quail Hollow Blvd.), which has been closed since the end of the 2012-13 school year. QHE (as were Shady Hills Elem. in Spring Hill and Sanders Memorial Elem. in Land O’Lakes) was closed for extensive improvements that would not have been possible with students in the building. But, judging by QHE’s transformation, the time “off” has been worth it.
“I feel very blessed to be a part of this new school and part of the Quail Hollow Elementary community,” said new principal Kara Smucker, while welcoming guests into school during the Open House. “The kids of the neighborhood deserve this (renovated school).”
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Smucker, who said that the school was expecting more than 150 visitors during the Open House, has been with PCSD for 23 years and served as a principal’s coach for the past two years in the eastern section of the District.
Pasco County School District superintendent Kurt Browning also stopped by to welcome students and their parents to the renovated QHE.
“(The school) is beautiful,” Browning said. “The community will be incredibly excited when they come in, not only about the school, but also about the teachers we have here. This carries on a long tradition of really caring about and educating the kids of the Quail Hollow community. Compared to the old (school), it’s night and day. We literally gutted everything that was in here.”
Built in 1974, QHE was the first of Wesley Chapel’s ten public schools to be built and was done so with a “Kelley” design, named for 1970s architect Eoghan Kelley. The “Kelley schools,” as they were called, featured “open” designs, meaning that most of the classrooms did not have true walls and the school was built without any windows.
However, the school’s design has been completely recreated, and its interior shines with sunlight throughout the day, thanks to the addition of floor-to-ceiling windows in many classrooms and entire walls of glass in several common areas. Many of the school’s hallways feature long skylights that flood the corridors with natural light.
“There’s a lot of light,” Smucker said. “There are open spaces still, but the hallways have lots of glass to bring natural light into classrooms. It was a very dark place before.”
While some classrooms are still somewhat “open,” they have partitions that can be pulled out to separate the teaching spaces during testing. Other classrooms have glass walls.
Assistant principal Kimberly Natal gave this reporter a quick tour leading up to the Community Open House and explained that the new design of the school’s interior will allow for extensive collaboration between teachers, students and classrooms.
The media center, once one of the darkest areas in the center of the school, has been transformed into a brightly lit and rainbow-colored collaboration area, Natal explained.
“This is an area where teachers and students can do activities and easily work together,” she explained.
Wesley Chapel Noon Rotary Volunteer Effort
While walking through the school with Natal, dozens of volunteers from the community, including many from the Wesley Chapel Noon Rotary Club (which meets Wednesdays at noon at Stage Left on S.R. 54 in Lutz) and the Pasco Education Foundation, were hard at work, getting the school ready to open. Many of the volunteers were labeling and stamping books for the media center. Smucker says that hundreds of volunteers have helped get the school set up in recent weeks.
Along with books and sunlight, the media center is literally a media hub for the school and features several flat screen TVs to assist instruction. Computers will be present in each classroom and several also feature digital projectors, including the art and music classrooms. Smucker says that there are 10 devices (either iPads or laptops) in each classroom, a 2-to-1 ratio of devices to students. She hopes to have a 1-to-1 ratio next year.
“I think this exceeds some of the new schools that are being built,” Smucker said. “It’s modern, bright and inviting.”
For more info, please visit QHES.Pasco.k12.fl.us.
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