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Some parents don't want kids on new campuses

With two schools opening this year, as many as 1,143 Pasco County students will switch campuses.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published March 1, 2005

NEW PORT RICHEY - Carol Smith is angry.

Over the past several weeks, the New Port Richey mother of three has spent countless hours on the phone with school officials. She has spoken before the School Board, written letters and requested public information. Her frustration has even brought her to tears.

It's done no good, she said. "There are no results," Smith stated in an exasperated moment last week.

Smith is one of the few but vocal parents who have taken a public stand against one of the two school rezoning plans expected to be approved during today's School Board meeting. It's a sentiment Pasco educators expect to hear a lot of over the next few years as they forge ahead to relieve crowded schools by constructing new ones.

With two schools opening in August - Longleaf Elementary in New Port Richey and Seven Oaks Elementary in Wesley Chapel - as many as 1,143 students will enroll in a campus other than the one they attend now.

Smith's daughter, a second-grader at Deer Park, will have to attend Longleaf. Smith has argued with school district numbers and focused attention on the 180 out-of-zone students attending Deer Park under the district's policy of granting school choice to some who apply. If things don't go her way today, she said she'll consider moving.

"The bottom line is I feel that Deer Park is where these children belong," said Smith, who like many parents researched the school before buying a house nearby. "It's their community school."

Six new schools are scheduled to open in 2006 and at least 20 more by 2014. The number of children affected by rezoning is only going to multiply - and so is the number of potentially disgruntled parents, upset over forced change.

"That this could be compounded six times certainly weighs heavy on us," said Ray Gadd, the administrator who oversaw the current rezoning process.

In an effort to make the process increasingly parent-friendly, administrators are reviewing what worked and what didn't work in the Longleaf and Seven Oaks rezonings.

"We know people are going to be upset when you redistrict," Gadd said. "Are we doing this in this fairest possible way we can?"

School officials began working with parents and principals on the Longleaf and Seven Oaks rezoning process before the winter break. In January, they held a series of informational meetings in the affected schools to get feedback.

Administrators even revamped the Longleaf plan after Nancy Cupps, an Odessa parent with a child at Trinity Elementary, made a convincing presentation to extend Trinity's boundary farther east so that Odessa children would be less likely to be rezoned several times in the next few years as two other elementary schools are built nearby.

But Cupps still is dismayed that the district didn't adopt her entire plan - officials stopped a few blocks short, leaving out about seven children who reside on the same lake she lives on.

That the school district says transportation is the primary reason is little consolation to Cupps: "I'll be damned if we'll have our neighborhoods defined by a bus route," she said. "What we need to do is keep our neighborhood intact."

Director of planning Mike Rapp said the Longleaf and Seven Oaks rezonings are the best plans the district has come up with given the current state of school crowding, despite the parent complaints. More than 3,000 students are entering the 60,000-student district annually.

"The objective is not to make everyone miserable," Rapp said. "The objective is to create true and long-lasting boundary relief."

While an angry parent is an uncomfortable byproduct of rezoning, school officials say the number of unhappy mothers and fathers has been minimal. Parents voiced few concerns over the Seven Oaks rezoning, which pulls from the crowded Wesley Chapel and Quail Hollow elementaries.

And Gadd said last week he'd personally heard a lot from two parents upset over the Longleaf change. School Board members on Feb. 15 listened to four. Rapp said the numbers of unhappy parents who have called him last week increased, but they are outnumbered, he told the School Board last month, by the "thousands" he hasn't heard from who are happy.

The statement drew snickers from some in the crowd.

"There are probably many who are not okay with it and who did not speak up," Amye Cox said Monday. She co-chairs the Pasco Parents for Quality Schools and Community, which seeks to involve parents more in the political processes that affect their schools.

Cox said both parents and administrators need to be tuned in to one another through the often-touchy rezoning process.

"As this county grows and expands its population, it's going to face the same growing pains that our children face," she said, comparing rezoning to the transition a kid faces as he moves from elementary to middle school. "No one wants to leave the cocoon or comfort zone they're in."

School officials should assume that for every question or complaint they get, there are probably a slew of others who feel the same way. And parents should get involved, give suggestions and offer solutions. Recognizing that not everyone gets what he wants all the time, Cox recommended that parents who don't get their way move forward with a positive outlook and look for ways to continue to be involved with their new school.

In the meantime, Cox said, the district should start informing parents today about the 2006 rezonings: "Change is most often softened when one is educated and understanding to the process instead of having the thing thrown at you."

[Last modified March 1, 2005, 01:11:12]