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School Crowding Eases Up

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 27, 2007

TAMPA - Once a middle school opens in Citrus Park and a high school opens in Lutz, northwestern Hillsborough will experience a lull in school construction.

No new schools are planned locally for at least a decade.

Growth has slowed, and the new schools and additions at existing ones will help ease crowding. The Hillsborough County School District will continue to open schools, particularly in the eastern and southern parts of the county, but it is scaling back its building from the rapid pace when enrollment was increasing by several thousand students annually.

Enrollment this year has been flat, officials told a committee Monday.

The school capacity advisory council, a group of parents, educators and community members, met for the second time this school year to get updates on construction, boundaries and enrollment projections. Boundary changes are coming as the district prepares for the middle and high school.

The middle school, under construction behind Citrus Park Elementary, is to open in August. The high school is scheduled for 2009 next to Martinez Middle School.

Committee member Lynn Bikowitz has twins in eighth grade at Martinez who could be assigned to the new high school. They will start as freshmen at Sickles, however, which is operating at 122 percent of its capacity. Sickles was supposed to get an additional wing in lieu of portable classrooms, but the district canceled it.

Bikowitz wanted to know why the district was leaving the high school so crowded.
Chief Facilities Officer Cathy Valdes said it is temporary.

The Lutz high school will draw mostly from Sickles and a little from Gaither, Valdes said, freeing up enough room at Sickles to make an addition unnecessary for the long run. The middle school, meanwhile, would relieve Farnell, Walker, Davidsen and Martinez. Not all of those children would attend the new school; the district will assign some to the new school and could move students from other schools into their vacant seats. The district last week hired Tampa firm SeerAnalytics to work with it to develop the boundaries for the middle school.

The district will hold community meetings before anything is decided, but those meetings have not yet been scheduled.

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503 or cpastor@tampatrib.com.

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