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School Boundaries In Hillsborough Are Elastic

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR

cpastor@tampatrib.com

Published: December 29, 2008

TAMPA - Thousands of students in eastern and northern Hillsborough County will change schools next year to fill new buildings, and the moves won't end when schools stop opening.

School district officials will start meeting with parents in January about attendance boundaries for five new schools that could affect students at 18 existing ones - and maybe more.

An elementary and middle school are under construction in southern Hillsborough County's Lake Hutto neighborhood, and another elementary and Strawberry Crest High School are being built by Interstate 4 and Gallagher Road. A second high school, Steinbrenner, will open in August in Lutz.

Some students will transfer to the new schools directly, triggering a domino effect where students from nearby crowded schools will be assigned to take their places.

No additional schools are proposed until 2013 at the earliest. But the lull won't keep the district from changing attendance zones.

Enrollment is unbalanced, said Bill Person, the district's general director for pupil placement and support programs. Some schools are bursting at the seams, while others have too many open seats. The district wants to look at the big picture and draw different boundaries where needed.

"We're going to look at every single boundary in the school district, especially those that are overcrowded sitting next to a school that is underutilized," Person said. "We have plenty of seats - they're just not where people want them."

Families at schools in those situations will want to pay attention. The district anticipates moving students in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Parent Bret Anderson would welcome reassignment for her two children but would prefer the district get it done at once rather than wait.

Anderson, who lives near Lutz Elementary off U.S. 41, has been involved with other parents in a push to get all Lutz students assigned to the same high school. Families in her area get sent to Freedom High School in New Tampa and feel splintered from the rest of the Lutz community, which attends Gaither.

The drive to Freedom from Lutz also runs through high-traffic areas, discouraging families from participating in extracurricular activities, Anderson said. Working parents cannot afford to take time from their jobs to ferry their children if the school is not conveniently located.

Anderson, whose oldest child attends Martinez Middle through school choice, hopes Lutz students from Freedom will get moved to Gaither or Steinbrenner.

Redistricting also would make sense when looking at surrounding schools. If Lutz students left Freedom, Anderson said, it would create more space if the district decided to transfer students from nearby Wharton, which is over capacity.

The district also will want to reduce crowding at Chamberlain and could do that by shifting Gaither students to Steinbrenner and Chamberlain into Gaither, Anderson said. It doesn't make sense to postpone some of these changes only to implement them in a few years

"This is the time really to even it all out," Anderson said.

Person said the superintendent is concerned about Chamberlain's numbers, and the district will decide in January if it can take on rezoning that school along with the others. Wharton is not under consideration for now.

The district has not released maps yet showing which neighborhoods would attend the new schools.

The school district has scheduled informational meetings next month for parents whose children will be attending some of the schools opening in August. Additional meetings are planned.

Keyword: School Enrollment, to see how crowded your child's school is.

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