563 Pride Students To Move To Hunter’s Green

The School District plans to move students who live in Arbor Greene & Cory Lake Isles to Hunter’s Green Elem. for 2018-19 school year 

**Please note — This story had to be updated after we went to press (on March 17) with our March 24 New Tampa issue. The information about which students the Hillsborough County School District planned to move wasn’t made available to the public or the media until March 21st.

On Thursday, March 30, 6 p.m., officials from Hillsborough County Public Schools will meet with parents at Benito Middle School (10101 Cross Creek Blvd.) to discuss proposed changes to attendance boundaries.

The affected schools will include Pride, Heritage, Hunter’s Green and Clark elementaries. These changes will not take effect for next school year (2017-18), but the following year, starting in August 2018.

Plans outlining the proposed new boundaries were released on the school district’s website on March 21 and are now available at http://www.sdhc.k12.fl.us/doc/251/growth-management/resources/boundary/.

The biggest change in the proposed boundaries is that the students from the University area who currently are being bused into Hunter’s Green and Clark are being reassigned to neighborhood schools closer to their residences to make room for expected growth – about 1,500 homes – in K-Bar Ranch.

Then, the boundaries of the four schools along Cross Creek/New Tampa Blvd., are being adjusted to balance attendance at those schools.

In the proposal, 563 students who live in Arbor Greene and Cory Lake Isles who currently are assigned to Pride will be re-assigned Hunter’s Green, says Lorraine Duffy Suarez, Hillsborough County Public Schools’ general manager for growth management. “We’re changing a lot of students, and I understand that,” Duffy Suarez says. “They have a lot of pride in their Pride, but Pride can’t hold all the students who are going to come there.”

She says moving so many students should give the affected students a measure of reassurance. “The whole neighborhood is moving,” she explains. “You’re going to a different school, but you’re taking 562 of your friends with you. It’s like a big chunk of Pride is now going to be called Hunter’s Green.”

She explains that, while it may be uncomfortable for those who are affected, the change is needed. “We monitor growth, and we know how much growth is coming, and we have to accommodate it,” she says. “Pride was built on land that we bought from K-Bar Ranch. The school was sited there because we knew that development was coming. Now is the time.”

School grades for last year, which are based on test scores, rank Pride and Clark as A schools, Heritage as a B, and Hunter’s Green as a C. For those families moving from Pride to Hunter’s Green, Duffy Suarez says, “You’re not moving from an A school to a C school, you’re taking your A school with you.”

Another proposed change is that students who are residents of the Morgan Creek apartments, just north of the Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. exit off I-75 will move from Hunter’s Green to Clark, which affects assignments for 187 students.

Students who live in most of K-Bar Ranch, who currently are assigned to attend Heritage, will move to Pride. This affects 154 students. Some students who move into areas of K-Bar Ranch that are not yet built, along with students in Easton Park, will remain at Heritage.

Duffy Suarez explains these numbers are not exact. “These are the numbers of students who are assigned to (those) schools,” she says. “Not every kid we assign to a school actually goes there.” Some students attend magnet, charter, or private schools, or are homeschooled.

Jason Pepe, chief community relations officer for Hillsborough County Public Schools, encourages all parents and interested community members to visit a special webpage that’s been set up with frequently asked questions regarding the changes that are happening in New Tampa and surrounding areas. It is available at sdhc.k12.fl.us/doc/1831/universityfaqs.

“The purpose of the FAQs is to be transparent,” says Pepe. “We have shared everything we know at this point and we really want to get this information to as many people as possible.”

Comments from parents and the community will be accepted at the meeting on March 30, as well as via email.

Duffy Suarez explains that the meeting will be “open house” style. “We have tables and stations set up for people to ask questions,” she says. “For example, if you’re being changed, you can go talk to the principal of the school you’re moving to.”

She says they’ll have maps set up, and she and her colleagues will be there to explain the maps to those who attend.

There also will be staffers on hand at the meeting who can answer questions about the process for choosing a different school, rather than their assigned neighborhood school.

“Our purpose in this meeting is to hear from (people who are affected by the changes),” Duffy Suarez says. “We will take written comments, and then we (will) come back and sort through it. We can’t make everyone who doesn’t want to move not move, but we will review comments and rationale and can make changes to the proposals.”

Plans outlining the new proposed school boundaries were released on the school district’s website at sdhc.k12.fl.us on March 21 (after we went to press with our latest issue, hitting mailboxes Friday).

These proposed changes will not take effect for next (the 2017-18) school year, but the following year, starting in August 2018.

“It’s important to recognize that these changes are (only) proposed,” says Pepe. “All boundary changes have to be approved by the School Board.”

Comments from parents and the community will be accepted at the meeting on March 30, as well as via email. Changes may be made based on that input before a final recommendation is made by school superintendent Jeff Eakins to the seven-member School Board.

The School Board is expected to consider the proposed recommendation – including any changes made as a result of comments from the community – at its meeting on Tuesday, May 16.

Wiregrass Ranch gets relief, GGG gets a zone with proposal

rezoning
These are the new zones proposed for Wesley Chapel for the 2016-17 school year.

Wesley Chapel’s newest high school is set to open off Old Pasco Rd. next fall. While High School GGG may not have an official name yet, it does now have a proposed zone with a pool of students to draw from in order to fill its hallways.

Wiregrass Ranch and Wesley Chapel high schools, as well as Dr. John Long and Thomas Weightman middle schools, are getting some much needed relief, and Seven Oaks, a vocal community in the process, survived unscathed despite concerns from residents it would be chopped up to achieve the county’s goals.

A third meeting to determine the new school’s boundaries was held on Thursday morning in Wesley Chapel High’s media center, with the Pasco’s School Boundary Committee (SBC) debating 14 options. It swiftly moved through most of the options before option 12 emerged as the choice.

GGG will draw from a swath of homes that line the west side of I-75, extending from north of Old Pasco Rd. all the way down to County Line Rd.

The most congested school in Pasco County is Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH), which currently has 2,495 students (which means it is at 153 percent of its capacity of 1,633), and its primary feeder school, Dr. John Long Middle School (JLMS).

JLMS, with 1,870 students, currently is at 147 percent of its capacity of 1,327. And, both schools are located in the fast-growing Wiregrass Ranch Development of Regional Impact (DRI), so something had to be done to accommodate an ever-growing number of students.

The option adopted reduces WRH by 782 students, or 31 percent. That leaves it only 80 students over capacity, and would eliminate the need for 10-period schools days, something the school had to resort to beginning in 2015-16 because of overcrowding.

JLMS is reduced by 612 students, or 33 percent, putting it 69 students under capacity.

WCH, which was already over capacity, gains 45 students, and is at 114 percent capacity, while TWM picks up 43 students, and is at 126 percent capacity.

To get to those numbers, WRH and JLMS students currently zoned for those two schools but living in communities on the western edge of the current boundary like Country Walk, Fox Ridge, Meadow Pointe III and IV, Wyndfields and Union Park will now be re-zoned to attend Wesley Chapel High and Weightman Middle.

For some students, such as those living in Meadow Pointe III and Union Park, that means a much longer drive to school, which was considered.

Wesley Chapel principal Hetzler-Nettles and Wiregrass Ranch principal Robyn White say the hardest thing about the process was trying to consider future growth in the plans. An Epperson Ranch development as part of of potential Connected City project could bring major growth to Wesley Chapel, while the Wiregrass Ranch area continues to expand as well.

“You just don’t know,” White said. “It’s hard to look into the future without knowing who will be in all these new locations.”

The SBC, which is made up of staff representatives from every school as well as parents from each and led by the director of planning for the Pasco School District, Chris Williams, will present Option 12 to the public on Tuesday, November 29 (where parents will be in attendance and allowed to weigh in) — before the Pasco County School Board can vote to approve them or not.

“I thought it went well,” said Hetzler-Nettles. “I came in thinking one way and ended up choosing an option that wasn’t even on the table in the second meeting.”

Hetzler-Nettles said her only surprise was that it passed unanimously.

Roughly 25 parents were on hand to watch the process, most from Seven Oaks. When Option 20, the last one to recommend re-zoning Seven Oaks, was voted out, a small, collective sigh could be heard.

A group of residents called Seven Oaks Voice submitted a six-page recommendation at the Sept. 29 meeting, and revised it for Thursday’s meeting, hoping to spare their subdivisions — which are located east of I-75 and north of S.R. 56 — from being broken up.

According to maps provided by the county, 20 percent of the current WRH population, or 509 students, live in Seven Oaks, and 22 percent of JLMS enrollment, or 414 students, live there as well. If the plan is to reduce the student bodies at those schools, an examination of Seven Oaks was unavoidable, and in fact, 10 of the 14 options called for either splitting up the community or re-zoning it for GGG or WCH.

In its proposal, Seven Oaks Voice suggested beginning the rezoning process with communities located west of I-75 (Westbrook Estates, Lexington Oaks, etc.), as well as those east of Meadow Pointe Blvd. (Union Park, Windsor, Country Walk and the Double Branch Elementary zone).

The recommendation said the current Seven Oaks DRI provides stability and won’t be a future strain due to limited future growth potential, while the other communities are in high-growth areas. Seven Oaks Voice also suggested that established communities should have priority over newer communities with the same proximity to JLMS and WRH.

Also, by leaving Seven Oaks in its current school zone, the county also can avoid transportation issues, as it claims the subdivision is one of the furthest away from GGG.

The SBC was charged with considering socio-economic balance, maintaining feeder patterns, future growth in certain areas (especially in Wiregrass Ranch), transportation and subdivision integrity before finalizing a proposal.