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New Pasco elementary school up for vote

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By RONNIE BLAIR | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 2, 2009

LAND O' LAKES - The Pasco County School Board is scheduled to vote this morning on a $13.7 million contract for construction of a new elementary school.

Work on the school could begin this week, if the contract with HCBeck Ltd. of Tampa is approved.

The school, designed for 762 students, is to open in 2010 off Community Drive, south of State Road 54, between Odessa and Trinity.

The school would help relieve crowding at Oakstead Elementary and Longleaf Elementary schools.

School board members haven't yet named the school. Right now it goes by the designation "Elementary S."

The school's design will be a repeat of a design used for Watergrass Elementary, a Wesley Chapel school already under construction and set to open in August. The architectural firm of Holmes Hepner & Associates of Tampa designed the schools.

Exact attendance boundaries haven't been set, but Elementary S will draw its students from Longleaf Elementary to the west and Oakstead Elementary to the east. Both are well above capacity and use portable classrooms to handle the student overflow.

Longleaf Elementary, built for 674 students when it opened in 2005, now has 965 students. Oakstead Elementary, built for 762 students in 2006, has 1,100.

Reporter Ronnie Blair can be reached at (813) 259-7065.

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