TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Growth Drops Out

Tribune photo by CHRISTINE DELESSIO

The Pasco County school district grew by just 246 students this year, after years of adding roughly 2,000 students annually.

ADVERTISEMENT

By RONNIE BLAIR

rblair@tampatrib.com

Published: January 9, 2009

LAND O' LAKES - School principals accustomed to seeing droves of new students show up at their doorsteps experienced something different this academic year.

The number of new faces has dropped drastically, a turn of events that has affected the school district's budget and could alter long-range construction plans.

Based on figures compiled by the state, the Pasco County School District grew by just 246 students this year, bringing enrollment in Pasco public schools to 65,921.

That comes after more than a decade of extraordinary growth. In some years, Pasco added more than 2,000 students, and in one year it grew by more than 3,000, making classroom space hard to come by.

Hallways and cafeterias grew crowded and hundreds of portable classrooms popped up on campuses.

The easing in the enrollment growth is proving both beneficial and detrimental to the district.

On the plus side, the pace of school construction in Pasco always lagged behind the growth, so the district now might be able to catch up, said Chris Williams, the district's planning director.

Most of the new schools planned for the next couple of years likely will still be built, but some further down the construction list could be postponed if the slow-growth trend continues, he said.

A downside for the district is that enrollment this year came in about 1,000 students below what was anticipated. That cost the district about $4.5 million in state funding, said Olga Swinson, the district's chief finance officer.

The state allocates money to school districts on a per-student basis. Budgets are planned in the summer before actual enrollment is known.

School districts also must submit projected enrollment numbers to the state months before they know how many students they will have. The state has a procedure for making the enrollment projection, but ultimately it is just an educated guess, Swinson said.

There is a slight discrepancy between the growth number the state Department of Education supplied The Tampa Tribune and the number the school district has. Williams said his data shows the district grew by 362 students, not 246.

Both sets of numbers agree that this year's enrollment is 65,921, but they disagree on last year's figure. Williams said that could be because the data the state gave the Tribune was based on a head count early in the 2007-08 school year. The enrollment dropped before the end of that year, he said.

Either number, though, puts this year's growth well below what has been typical for the past decade.

In 2005-06, for example, the district grew by 2,552 students. Even as recently as last year, the growth was 1,642 students.

"It will be interesting to see what it is next year, if it's flat or we go negative," Williams said.

The projection for 2009-10 is for 280 additional students, he said.

Pasco's enrollment slowdown comes at a time when most school districts in Florida are losing students. Out of the state's 67 school districts, 52 reported enrollment declines this year.

Hillsborough saw enrollment drop by 1,692 students. Hernando's enrollment declined by 154.

Pinellas, which has been in an enrollment nosedive for several years, lost 2,036 students and is planning to close a few schools.

In contrast, Pasco is still building schools.

Two schools - Watergrass Elementary in Wesley Chapel and Anclote High in Holiday - are set to open in August. Upcoming construction plans also call for an elementary school in the Connerton development in Land O' Lakes, an elementary school in Odessa and a high school off State Road 52 in the Hudson area.

The district may need to revisit school construction plans beyond those, though, including possibly postponing a middle school envisioned for Old Pasco Road in the eastern part of the county, Williams said.

That could mean some still-crowded schools won't get relief as quickly as the district would like, he said. Long Middle School in Wesley Chapel, for example, is about 400 students over capacity.

That's more than enough to cause crowding problems, but not enough to warrant construction of a new middle school, which likely would have a capacity of about 1,300.

"It's kind of an interesting time," Williams said. "You don't want to overbuild. You could end up like Pinellas and in a few years be closing schools."

He doesn't anticipate that happening, though. More likely, he said, is that the housing market eventually will pick back up and Pasco's school enrollment will, too.

"I think we are going to be in a good position that when it does come back we'll be poised to manage it and handle it," Williams said.

Reporter Ronnie Blair can be reached at (813) 948-4218.

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT