TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

At Riverview High, Pep And Ideas Flow

ADVERTISEMENT

By MARILYN BROWN

mbrown@tampatrib.com

Published: February 15, 2009

TAMPA - The students at Riverview High School know how to turn a blood drive into a party.

They also throw a mean Halloween bash for 4,000 kids each fall and blow away the competition with their theater productions.

The View - as Principal Bob Heilmann calls it - also has an intangible characteristic. Students move among groups on campus with ease, a meshing of mostly middle-class teens without the cliques that often divide high school students.

"You can be with one group of people one day, another the same day, another a different day - everybody's cool with it," says Ronnie Johnson, a junior who transferred to Riverview a year ago from Armwood High. Students and faculty also rave about their principal, a former guidance counselor who worked for 30 years as a professional soccer referee.

Heilmann routinely sweeps debris from the lunchroom and parking lot and directs traffic on busy Boyette Road before and after school. He once donned black goggles and feathers to "fly" suspended by a wire for a theater production, and he knocked on the bedroom door of a student who repeatedly missed school.

Heilmann also was there in the final hours for a student who died of cancer, and for families of 12 others lost to illness, accidents and suicide.

"He makes everyone feel like they're his favorite," senior Chelsey Pachoud says.

Head custodian Kevin Tanner says Heilmann and his staff are immersed in school and community activities. So, he says, "The student body operates the same way."

Riverview's blood drives, for example, are famous. The school hosts five a year instead of four like most other Hillsborough high schools and consistently makes the largest single-day donations in Florida Blood Services' five-county service area, said Debbie Jones, the agency's community relations representative.

"Students can't wait until they're 16 so they can donate," Jones says.

With up to 10 bloodmobiles pulled up to the school, music thumping and a smoky grill offering hot dogs and hamburgers, it's an easy sell.

Christian Padgett, 17, transports the grill to school on blood drive days in the back of his 1996 GMC truck. He and his dad store the grill at home, where they are building a bigger one.

Graduates such as 18-year-old Michael O'Brien return often for the blood drives.

"I did it every time I could in high school, so I keep doing it whenever I can," he says.

Before each drive, student government recruits donors, and Heilmann records a telephone message sent to students' homes.

"You have to make yourself present in their lives," says Heilmann, one of 25 principals in the nation to win MetLife's Ambassadors in Education Award last year for community collaboration. The award came with $5,000 for the school. His staff nominated him without telling him.

Heilmann attends nearly every school event and won't ask anyone to do a job he won't do himself.

He was in his office just before 9 p.m. on a recent Friday when his phone rang. It was a 2008 graduate informing him that he had just been promoted to Marine corporal.

Heilmann said he and Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps instructor, Master Sgt. Milton Clifton, were the only "family" present when Ivan Colina graduated from boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., in November.

It was homecoming weekend at Riverview. The men drove to South Carolina for the ceremony and returned to Riverview that night for the game.

"He led his platoon," Heilmann says with satisfaction.

Setting The Tone

Heilmann is one of three men who molded the culture at Riverview when the school opened in 1998. The man in charge was Principal Vince Thompson.

"We told them, 'We're going to love you like you have never been loved before,'" Thompson says. "Yeah, they laughed, but we told them, 'While you're laughing, you gotta love us back.'"

It was part of a strategy to overcome resistance from families with students from Brandon, East Bay and Bloomingdale high schools who were being reassigned to the new school.

"They felt like when they crossed the Alafia River from Bloomingdale, all their brains were going to fall out and they wouldn't be worth a damn," Thompson says.

With Heilmann and Ron Wardlow from East Bay High as his assistant principals, the team hired teachers and other staff who proved they had common sense, cared first about students and would listen.

On opening day, the staff tried to greet every student, boarding buses as they pulled up and corralling groups as they arrived in cars. Students had just three rules to follow, Thompson says: Attendance (show up), achievement (do your work) and attitude.

"You gotta act right - you got to act like you got some brains," Thompson says.

Some families found ways around the transfer to Riverview, but by the second year, "We had so many kids we had to build a new building," Wardlow says. As the school's athletic director, Wardlow saw top athletes recruited by other schools, but Thompson had set the rules.

"He said we don't want to be a high school that recruits other people's athletes," Wardlow said. "He said, 'If we beat you, we're going to beat you with our kids.'"

The staff's personalities, combined with the administrator's plan, soon won over and were adopted by the kids whose homes and school had gobbled up the fields that once yielded tomatoes and other produce. The area's rural character waned, as did its agricultural program. But the down-to-earth attitude remains.

"We have very humbling demographics. It's nice," says Wili Sargable, the school's wrestling coach and 1989 state wrestling champion. Riverview has had its share of top athletic teams, and this year the wrestlers are the standouts - third in the county as a team with winners of several individual championships.

Sargable is among the teachers and administrators who say they have had opportunities but no interest in leaving the spirit and support at Riverview.

"Being a coach, a teacher, takes a lot of passion," he says. "Once you lose that, you're on the short road."

Riverview is not perfect - students skip class, occasionally fight and break the law.

"Lately, most of the arrests have been for drugs - marijuana," says Tommy Shannon, the Hillsborough deputy serving as the school resource officer. The biggest question he deals with is "emancipation" - the age when teens can live on their own.

Dustin Spearman, 18, says school rules are enforced, but there are second chances. Heilmann let him return to school "after I got kicked out" for a string of minor offenses, Spearman says.

"I love all of my teachers," he says. "Even when you have a bunch of problems outside the school, they try to help you with them."

An 'A' School

Riverview earned an A grade from the state last year based on test scores. Parent involvement often drives such success, but not at Riverview.

The Parent Student Teacher Association has fewer than 200 members, and 75 percent to 80 percent are faculty, says President Dickie Morehouse. Meetings are usually attended by the eight board members, which include Morehouse and his wife, plus "one or two others," Morehouse said.

Riverview's drama department is a consistent winner in district and state competitions and invites other schools to participate in its summer Riverview Community Theatre productions.

The heart of that program is Daron Hawkins, a tireless drama teacher whose productions have ranged from "Seussical, The Musical" - the comical show in which Heilmann was suspended from a wire - to dark, controversial works such as "The Pillowman," about a writer who focuses his tales on child murders.

Hawkins pushes his students. The drama group's one-act play, "Mother Hicks," is one of four regional winners going on to state competition.

"He's extremely hard on those kids," says Vicki Apsey, whose 17-year-old daughter, Jordyn, has been taking drama classes with Hawkins for three years. "I know they respect him for that."

Apsey echoes what other parents say about the staff.

"I'm never pushed away like my kids were just a number," she says. "They really care."

That caring has led to shared grief.

In 10 years, 13 Riverview Sharks have died before graduation. Seven died from illnesses, two from car accidents, one in a pedestrian accident, one drowned and two committed suicide. A wooden, painted memorial bearing their names has faded, so it is being rebuilt.

Heilmann is the only founder left. Thompson has been gone nine years. Wardlow retired Jan. 30.

When those most invested are gone, the vision often dims.

"Eleven years - we're still on it," says Heilmann, 60. He says he has no plans to retire soon or leave Riverview.

When he does, the school's essence won't be lost, he says.

"There's the Shark family spirit that thrives here. Our staff won't let it die."

ABOUT RIVERVIEW HIGH SCHOOL

11311 Boyette Road

Year opened: 1998

Number of students: 2,129

Ethnicity: White, 52%; Black, 17%; Hispanic, 22%; Asian, 2.5%; Indian, 0.5%; Multiracial, 6%

Students receiving who get free or reduced-price meals: 34%

Non-English-speaking students: 4.6 %

Students with disabilities: 12%

State grade in 2008: A

Grades since 1999: Three A's, two B's, four C's

Median college entrance scores in 2007: SAT, 1002; ACT, 20.5

School boundary: Riverview, south Brandon

Principal: Robert Heilmann

Past principal: Vince Thompson, 1998-00

Faculty: 126 teachers, one assistant teacher, six administrators, 10 clerical staff, two nurses, 13 lunchroom staff, 18 aides for students with disabilities, 15 custodians

Teachers with master's degrees: 47

Teachers with doctorate degrees: One

National Board Certified teachers: 14

First-year teachers: Six

Mascot: Shark

Colors: blue, black and silver

Athletics: softball state champions, 2000 and 2002; Class 6A District football champs, 2005-06

Major community support: Mosaic Phosphate Co.

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT