Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

New schools hit few minor snags

Amid the chaos of opening day, students can count on three things: friends, fashion and cafeteria food.

By MICHELE MILLER
Published August 9, 2006

	[Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton]
	From left, Alex Banken, Mike Cummins and Andrew Pelno, all 12, prepare to eat their first lunch together at Paul R. Smith Middle School in Holiday on Tuesday. "I don't know what this is, but I like it!" Alex said after sinking his teeth into his sandwich. The school is one of the county's six new ones.

PORT RICHEY - Three kids going to three different schools made for a busy morning for Wendy Rath.

She had two down - Steven, 14, at Gulf High and Matthew, 12, at Bayonet Point Middle - and one to go. Once she dropped off Rebecca, 7, at the parking lot of the newly opened Gulf Highlands Elementary, Rath celebrated the fact she was a free woman.

At least until school let out in the afternoon.

"I'm so glad school's started," said Rath, 46, adding that she was impressed with the new campus. "No one's home. Now I can clean the house the way I want to clean it."

Kim Hammond, on the other hand, was caught off-guard by the early start of school, which won't be happening for another couple of weeks in O'Fallon, Mo. That's where Hammond, 46, and her son Nick, 11, lived before moving to Port Richey last Thursday.

Lucky for them, a real estate agent tipped them off.

"I was surprised that school was starting," Hammond said as she and her son waited in the school office with about 15 others waiting to register their kids, work out mixups with the bus and pay fees.

That's typical stuff for the first day of school, said Gulf Highlands Elementary principal Margie Polen.

"We're about 99 percent finished," she said. There was still more landscaping to be done and the covered physical education area was scheduled to be completed by Monday, she said. Until then, P.E. would be held under the gazebo adjacent to the school office.

But most everything else seemed to be in order. And with only six buses and most students walking or riding their bikes, the morning dropoff had gone surprisingly smoothly.

"It's an exciting day. I've just been wandering around, meeting the kids, trying to remember their names," Polen said.

The Pasco County school year started Tuesday with six new schools opening their doors. And while some are still hiring and wrapping up construction work, the county seemed to have a smooth back-to-school day.

Four of the six new schools - Gulf Highlands Elementary, Oakstead Elementary, Paul R. Smith Middle, and Dr. John Long Middle - opened in their permanent facilities. Trinity Oaks Elementary and Wiregrass Ranch High School opened in portables because of construction delays.

Monday was a whirlwind of activity at Paul R. Smith Middle in Holiday. A few hard-hats were still hanging around. Florida Mulch Express was pumping mulch out of a big truck. And about 30 kids and parents were registering for school in the front office.

Principal Christopher Dunning felt completely at ease.

"The facility's beautiful, we're in great shape, and everyone's in a classroom," he said.

About 970 students were scheduled to attend Paul R. Smith Middle, named in honor of Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery during his service in the Iraq war.

Those students include Smith's son, David, who is a seventh-grader, and others drawn from Gulf Middle, Seven Springs Middle and Gulfside, Sunray and Mittye P. Locke Elementary schools.

Countywide, officials expect about 62,100 students to attend Pasco schools this year. Exact figures were not available Tuesday.

Dunning was still smiling broadly Tuesday morning as he greeted Gary Tingle, the director of the donation center for Metropolitan Ministries, who dropped off cartons of school supplies for needy students.

With about 62 percent of the students at Paul R. Smith Middle on free and reduced lunch, those supplies would certainly come in handy, Dunning said as he headed to the cafeteria, where pockets of silence followed by noisy commotion indicate the changing lunch schedule.

There, 11-year-old Harley VanScoyoc was showing off her first-day-of-school outfit - pink sweater, jeans and a pink beaded belt. "I picked this out a long time ago," Harley said after enjoying lunch with friends and fellow sixth-graders Brittany Moss and Amanda Marra. "But this is the first time I've worn it."

So how much effort went into the wardrobe of seventh-grader Cody Wood, who was wearing a "Bubba Gump Shrimp Co." T-shirt, jeans shorts and a pair of ES skateboarding sneakers?

"Not a lot," said Cody, 12, as he dribbled a packet of hot sauce over his pizza. Still, there was a lot to look forward to this year, Cody said.

"The first and last day of school are the best days," he said. "The first because you get to wear all your new stuff and see all your friends again - and the last because school's over and you're going into summer."

[Last modified August 8, 2006, 23:07:55]