TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

What's New? School Year - And Some Schools, Too

Tribune photo by Fred Bellet

The new Crews Lake Middle School is located at 15144 Shady Hills Rd. at the corner of Crews Lake Drive.

ADVERTISEMENT

By RONNIE BLAIR

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 17, 2008

Crews Lake Middle School, standing three stories tall on Shady Hills Road, is an imposing structure that can intimidate sixth-graders who are just a few months removed from one-story elementary schools.

So Isaiah Abraham, 11, and his mother, Jennifer Abraham, were relieved to learn that classrooms in the new school are organized to give a smaller feel to the large structure. Sixth-graders are divided into two teams on the first floor, and students will spend most of their time in classrooms that line a short hallway.

Seventh-graders have a similar situation on the second floor and eighth-graders are on the third floor.

"I like the way it's set up," Jennifer Abraham said. "The classes are in sequential order. He doesn't have to go all over the building."

After touring the school last week, she and Isaiah anticipate a wonderful year.

It gets started Monday, when public school students across Pasco County return to class to begin the 2008-09 academic year.

Crews Lake is one of two new schools the district is opening this year as it continues to battle crowding.

The other is Veterans Elementary in Wesley Chapel, where the school mascot is Super Heroes and teaching teams go by such names as the Incredibles, Power Rangers and Super Friends.

"We're the Justice League," said Principal Donna Busby, meaning her and Assistant Principal Jason Petry.

The district is anticipating 65,668 students in its elementary, middle and high schools, which is 4,235 more than schools have capacity for. The district will use more than 500 portable classrooms to handle the overflow.

In addition to the students in traditional public schools, more than 1,000 will attend charter schools. One new charter school, Imagine Charter School at Land O' Lakes, is opening this year.

Crews Lake Middle Sets Sail

Construction of Crews Lake Middle moved at such a good pace that Principal Chris Christoff was able to move into his office June 9, giving him more than two months to get things in order in anticipation of the first day of school.

That eased some of the pressure of opening a new school.

"I don't know that there's really been anything I've lost sleep over," Christoff said.

The school district projected Crews Lake Middle would have 655 students, but Christoff said it might end up closer to 700. Either way, the school will be well below its capacity of 1,306 students.

The school board left room for growth when it set attendance boundaries and Christoff said that's a good thing. Shady Hills is a likely growth area once the economy improves and housing construction revs up again, he said.

Crews Lake Middle is the second three-story school in Pasco. The first was Rushe Middle, which opened last year in Land O' Lakes.

Christoff was one of several principals who traveled to Fort Myers with Assistant Superintendent Ray Gadd a few years ago to tour Varsity Lakes Middle, which served as the template for Crews Lake and Rushe.

He said he's a fan of the design.

"What I like about the school is it's very safe," Christoff said.

Every visitor must come through the reception area to enter the main building. All classroom doors are inside the building, unlike many other Pasco schools in which classes can be entered from outside.

Instead of having adjoining offices, Christoff and his assistant principals are spread throughout the building, so each floor has an administrator and a guidance office.

The students chose Raiders as the school's mascot, and a pirate theme is woven into the school.

Students don't eat in a cafeteria. They go to the Galley.

The stairways will have signs resembling compasses to direct students to use one stairway to go up and the other to go down.

Two live tropical fish in the administrative area are named Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner, the main characters from the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean."

Lettering throughout the school incorporates an old-style look that invokes the pirate image.

In addition to the main building, there are two smaller buildings for the cafeteria and the gymnasium.

About 75 to 80 people work at the school.

One is Jay Emmert, the band and chorus teacher who moved from Pinellas County where he used to be band director at East Lake High. He looks forward to the different focus a middle school offers.

"Middle school allows more teaching time," Emmert said.

High school band directors spend as much time on administrative duties as teaching, he said.

One program Christoff is excited about will be headed up by technology specialist Joe Groppe with the assistance of a student from the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota. They will sponsor a computer animation club and teach the students digital animation.

"This is cutting edge," Groppe said.

Veterans Elementary Is Heroic

Busby also had the opportunity to move into her new school months in advance, making preparation for the arrival of students smooth.

"We are very fortunate," Busby said. "We've been able to take the whole summer to get deliveries."

Veterans Elementary is in Wesley Chapel, which for years has been one of the county's highest growth areas. As a result, this new school is projected to open at or near its capacity of 762 students.

"All the families want to live here," Busby said. "It's a nice community."

Parents are already proving to be an active bunch, she said. The PTA has held two meetings and - as is typical with new elementary schools in Pasco - one of its first activities will be to raise money to install playground equipment.

Parent Andrea Mitchell painted a mural in the office that serves as a logo for the school and has been reproduced on school T-shirts. The mural plays on the Super Heroes mascot theme, showing a boy and girl in superhero garb flying into action. The boy is holding a book.

Mitchell has four children, two of whom are students at Veterans Elementary. They are Victoria, 8, a third-grader, and Sophia, 6, a first-grader.

"We're very excited," Mitchell said last week during the school's meet-the-teacher day. "The girls finally got to come and see the mural finished."

Among the busy staff members this summer has been media specialist Marianne Mackey-Smith, who had the task of creating a media center book collection from scratch.

She ordered 6,000 books at a cost of $74,000. The collection is slightly under the 10 books per student that is recommended by library groups, but Mackey-Smith said it's a good beginning.

"I am so excited," she said. "I am ... pleased with our startup collection."

Busby said she managed to hire a good mixture of teachers. Most are from Pasco County, but they come from different schools and bring with them a wide range of experiences.

"We're going to have a great year," she said.

Reporter Ronnie Blair can be reached at (813) 948-4218 or rblair@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT