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Schools

Board okays $13.9M for new west side school

The new elementary school, which will help relieve overcrowding in others, should open in August.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published October 5, 2005

A long-discussed west side elementary school finally has a firm price tag.

The Pasco County School Board on Tuesday approved spending up to $13.9-million with Cutler Associates to build a 754-student school near the Gulf Highlands subdivision off State Road 52 in Bayonet Point.

After more than a year of negotiations with landowners and concerned residents in the surrounding neighborhoods, the district last year purchased 22.7 acres there to help relieve overcrowding at Schrader, Fox Hollow, Chasco and Calusa elementaries.

Due to open in August, the elementary school is one of seven schools pegged to open before or during the 2006-07 school year.

In other board business Tuesday:

Max Ramos, former Land O'Lakes High School principal, was promoted to become the district's first director of leadership development. Ramos has spent the past three years overseeing the district's charter schools. His new position was created as part of superintendent Heather Fiorentino's district reorganization plan. He will be coordinating training and recruiting principals and assistant principals.

Nancy Scowcroft, a former deputy director of the Florida Charter School Resource Center at the University of South Florida, will replace Ramos as supervisor of charter schools. Scowcroft joined the Pasco district in September as a grants resource specialist. She served as the director of independent public education for the state Department of Education for a year before moving to USF in 2003. Pasco is home to five charter schools. A charter school is a public school operated by a private organization with some oversight from a public agency like the school board.

Assistant superintendent Sandy Ramos (who is married to Max Ramos) and board Chairman Marge Whaley reported the district's Head Start program received glowing remarks during a recent regulatory review by a 20-person team. The staff was described in an exit interview as being "very professional . . . a step above what you normally see," said Whaley. Sandy Ramos said that the comments were uplifting to a prekindergarten division that went through a difficult time this year. A program serving 300 needy students was dismantled this summer largely because of discontinued funding by the Pasco-Hernando Early Learning Coalition. The federal Head Start agency has not yet issued its formal findings in writing.

Rebecca Catalanello covers education in Pasco County. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6241 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6241. Her e-mail address is rcatalanello@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 5, 2005, 01:41:37]