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Year offers lessons in change

From rezoning to honey buns, the Citrus County schools and the parents and students they serve are still struggling to adapt to new proposals and issues.

By EDDY RAMIREZ
Published December 26, 2005

	[Times photo: Stephen J. Coddington]
	Citrus County school superintendent Sandra "Sam" Himmel chats with Inverness Primary students Kyle Everett, 10, left, and Justin Jones, 9, center, during their bus ride home from school in May. Himmel has met opposition this past school year to some of her ideas including changes in school start times. Multimedia report

Cairn Pugh of Beverly Hills probably didn't know that she was about to sum up the year in Citrus schools when she found herself standing in a room full of angry parents and besieged school officials earlier this year.

The district recently had proposed new school attendance boundaries that would divert Pugh's 14-year-old son, Eric, and more than 100 Lecanto High School freshmen and sophomores to the district's two less crowded high schools.

School officials tried to appease angry parents during a community meeting in Crystal River, saying explosive growth in the Lecanto area left the district no choice. So distraught were some parents that a couple started circulating a petition condemning the move and threatened legal action against the School Board.

Amid flaring tempers, Pugh rose from her chair to explain the root of the problem.

"It's change," she said calmly. "Any change is upsetting."

The words rang true to many in the audience, including perhaps Superintendent Sandra "Sam" Himmel, whose decisions over the past year have not all been widely popular.

From rezoning, to the change in school start times and even banning junk food from cafeterias, the past year has been marked with changes that have been met with resistance by parents, students and even employees of the school system.

Some of the biggest changes stemmed from growth, which this year visited school districts across the state, proving that even small, semirural districts like Citrus are not immune to its consequences.

At two separate community meetings, school officials tried without success to explain to parents that growth had finally caught up with Citrus County.

Rezoning, they said, was the most viable way to ease crowding at Lecanto High, which for the past three years has taken in more students from the fast growing Central Ridge area than it can fit.

Hallways are so congested during passing periods, one Lecanto student complained at one meeting, that students are being jostled. The school was even forced to turn some hallways into one-way corridors.

But the district's explanation was lost on parents and students alike. A Lecanto football player told school officials that if he was forced to move to Crystal River High next school year, he would drop the sport.

In the end, the district agreed to modify its rezoning plan to allow current Lecanto freshmen to stay if they wish, just as sophomores and juniors can. New students who live in the revised district, however, will have to go to Citrus High or Crystal River High.

The School Board will vote on the proposed rezoning on Jan. 24.

The district is now considering a two-story, 12-classroom wing that will house incoming freshmen in concrete portables. The addition will be part of what school officials are calling a freshmen transition center or freshmen academy.

The change in school start times also brought an avalanche of complaints.

Although less a consequence of growth, the change in start times was partly motivated by a more efficient schedule of bus routes that would save the district $150,000.

In reaching the decision, Himmel said she mainly considered that young children would not be at a bus stop in the dark. Also, the new schedule would prevent drivers from rushing from one run to the next.

Under the new schedule, all younger children now start school later in the day and high school students start earlier. But as recently as October, the schedule was still drawing criticism from parents of younger children, including many who start work early and must scramble to find before school child care. They also worry about their children's performance in the classroom, citing studies that show younger children learn best at earlier times.

Most complaints have come from teachers and parents with children at Inverness Primary and Pleasant Grove Elementary, the two schools with traditionally some of the earliest start times.

Himmel has said she continues to check in with principals and teachers to gauge how well the new times are working. She has never publicly dismissed the possibility of a new schedule for the next school year.

A tough change for students was also a School Board decision earlier this year to stop selling popular snacks, including honey buns, cookies and brownies. Since then, the district has restricted soda sales to afterschool hours.

School officials say unhealthy foods and carbonated drinks have no place in schools. They hope the changes will be encourage healthier eating habits among some students.

Students say they worry that other favorites, including pizza and french fries, will soon go the way of the honey bun.

"If they get rid of this food," one Citrus High student said earlier this year, "kids won't eat here."

[Last modified December 26, 2005, 10:46:21]