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New middle and elementary schools to open

Bartels Middle has risen in Live Oak. Deer Park Elementary will begin in portables in Citrus Park.

By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK
Published July 28, 2006

Two new schools will open in northern Hillsborough County this year, one the product of long-term planning, the other an impromptu solution to several failed efforts to find new land.

Bartels Middle School will welcome its students to an $18.5-million building next to Turner Elementary School in the Live Oak subdivision. The new school, which sits on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard just south of the Pasco County line, aims to ease crowding at nearby Liberty and Benito middle schools in New Tampa. It has been under construction for more than a year.

Deer Park Elementary will debut in 43 refurbished portable classrooms in the back field of Citrus Park Elementary School.

Workers began fixing the portables in June; the new school, which will rise in the Mandolin subdivision, is still under design.

Under more ordinary circumstances, school officials might not have placed students in a temporary campus while just beginning a new one. But superintendent MaryEllen Elia set a priority of reducing the enrollment of Bryant Elementary, the county's most overcapacity school last year, from which Deer Park draws its entire student body.

Elia and her staff repeatedly have said that had the Keystone Civic Association not sued over the placement of an elementary school along Gunn Highway, this situation would not have arisen.

School officials now list the Keystone school, temporarily called Elementary X, as "on hold." They say they intend to build it, if the courts allow, even as they also embark upon building another elementary school to open in 2007 on the Walker Middle School campus about a mile away.

Maribeth Franklin, the Bartels Middle principal, has been on the job since March, hiring staffers, purchasing materials and otherwise preparing for the first day of classes.

"I don't want anyone to know we're a new school" by the way it operates, Franklin said, watching construction from her office window. "We're going to be a full-functioning, well-running building from Day One."

The teaching staff first met in mid June to create a vision for the school. Franklin did not want to set forth a mission on her own, because she wanted the participation of the educators who will work with the children.

Students already have chosen the Bengals as the school mascot, and the school colors of dark red, black and silver.

When it opens, Bartels should have about 750 students, well short of its 1,200-seat capacity. The three grades will be separated by wings, with room to grow.

Franklin looks forward to the benefits of the smaller student body.

"The nice thing is, when you start out small, you get everyone on the same page," she said. "It makes it easier to create the nice community feel. ... It's important for kids at that age."

Special electives at Bartels will include technology exploration, which focuses on areas such as robotics, and family consumer science, which looks at using academics in real life.

Deer Park Elementary jumped from nothing to nonstop bustling just days after Lou Cerreta took the principal's job in April. In short order, he worked with parents to establish a PTA, which already has fundraisers planned. Together, they made sure the school has two aggressive academic programs that the parents wanted for their children.

The school will have Math Academy for third through fifth grades and a Science Spectrum Lab. Deer Park also joined a test run for the School Enrichment Model for Reading program, and registered with the American Cancer Society as a "sun-wise" school, which includes a skin protection curriculum.

At the same time, Cerreta dealt with concerns that some parents raised about the portable classrooms where their children will attend. Several complained that the buildings were unsafe and unhealthy.

By early June, district maintenance and construction workers had begun to change out roofs and carpets, add hurricane straps and replace insulation. They also cut out windows in each portable.

Meanwhile, Cerreta made arrangements to improve the campus fencing, so people who park at the south end of the classrooms will not have open access to everything.

"There will be one and only one secure entrance to the school during the school day," at the north end by the principal's portable office, he said.

Leaders from Deer Park and Citrus Park Elementary negotiated how to control traffic on their shared property, so parents and buses and walkers don't become ensnared in congestion. One upshot is that Deer Park will begin classes an hour later than most elementary schools, at 9 a.m., letting out at 3:15 p.m.

Students should move into the permanent school in August 2007, district facilities director Cathy Valdes said.

That's the same time the school district plans to open another elementary school on the Walker Middle School campus in Keystone, to ease crowding at schools to the north.

Plans to open a middle school in 2007 have fallen apart; the school district failed to secure property in the Keystone-Lutz area for the campus.

Between 2008 and 2011, the school district expects to build three more elementary schools, one middle school and two high schools in the northern section of the county.

With the exception of a high school on Lutz-Lake Fern Road, the School Board has not selected the sites.

Jeffrey S. Solochek can be reached at 813 269-5304 or solochek@sptimes.com.

[Last modified July 28, 2006, 06:37:12]