As you’re receiving this issue, the 2025-26 school year is about a week old, but because our deadline to finish this issue was the day before school started, we couldn’t get photos from the actual opening day of school onto these pages, so our amazing photographer Charmaine George went to as many “Meet the Teacher” events at as many of our area schools as she could.
Charmaine included shots from each of these events not only in the beautiful collage on this page, but also put together the best of the best photos she took and gave us dozens of options to fit on these pages.
A few things to note:
1) Neither Freedom nor Wharton high schools held their own “Meet the Teacher” events, so we have no photos from those schools on these pages.
2) Charmaine was careful to ask permission at each school, so the faces of children who are not allowed to be photographed were not included.
Charmaine was able to get photos at Clark, Heritage, Hunter’s Green, Pride and Tampa Palms elementaries and at Turner Bartels K-8 School. We apologize that she was not able to get pictures at Chiles Elementary, Benito or Liberty middle schools or Freedom or Wharton high schools. — GN
New Tampa’s Hillsborough County public schools continue to earn impressive grades from the Florida Department of Education, which released its 2024-25 School Grades Report earlier this month.
All but one of New Tampa’s elementary and middle schools earned an “A” grade, with Tampa Palms earning a “B” for the second year in a row, after many years of consistent A ratings.
Two New Tampa schools improved from a B to an A. Heritage Elementary earned an A after dipping to a B in 2023- 24. Turner Bartels K-8 earned an A after several years of earning Bs.
“We are so proud of everyone’s hard work,” says Heritage Elementary principal Mary Booth. “It’s a true team effort from teachers and staff, plus our students work so hard and our families are supportive.”
The six schools that maintained their A status include Chiles, Clark, Hunter’s Green and Pride elementary schools and both Benito and Liberty middle schools.
Both of New Tampa’s high schools again earned a “C” grade, as both schools have consistently, going back to 2016.
“But, we’re making growth,” says Taryn Anello, the principal at Wharton High. “Across the board, we’ve made gains in every category, and we’re on an upward trend. We’ve improved 22 points over last year.”
She says she hates for teachers, students and families to feel disheartened because the school’s grade did not improve to a B, when the students, teachers and staff are all working so hard to make gains that they hope will show up in the school’s rating.
“With the storms and the chaotic year we had, sometimes it’s a heavy lift to maintain that focus,” Anello says. “It wasn’t just the adults who went through those hardships, but our kids went through that, too.”
Even those schools that earn an A recognize that boiling so many measurements into just one letter can be problematic, and may not be representative of all of the complexities of an entire school and all of the students within it. The letter grades take into account various measurements to represent student achievement, learning gains, graduation, acceleration success and maintaining a focus on students who need the most support.
For example, Heritage lost just a slight percentage in 2023-24 and dipped an entire letter grade. “It depends on the students in front of you and their needs,” explains Booth. “We look at student learning gains, for example, but sometimes the tests don’t accurately measure the gains we’ve seen.”
Hillsborough County received an overall B grade from the state, which Hillsborough Superintendent of Schools Van Ayres said in an email to families was only one percentage point away from an overall A rating for the District.
“These achievements are a result not only of the hard work of our students, teachers, support professionals and school administrators, but also of our laser-like focus on high-quality core instruction in every classroom and intentional progress monitoring to drive these impressive results,” Superintendent Ayres said in a media release.
