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Her school, their oasis

A former student who herself tasted poverty, principal Karen Marler works to make Lacoochee Elementary a bright spot in a struggling community.

By GINA PACE
Published September 18, 2006

LACOOCHEE

The first change Karen Marler made when she came to Lacoochee Elementary as principal was to tear down the barbed wire on the school's front fence.

"This is not a prison, it's a school," said Marler, of the building that was once painted the same dingy yellow and brown as Zephyrhills Correctional Institution. "I was so disheartened and disappointed by what I saw."

Marler, who came to Lacoochee Elementary in 2004, set out to make major changes at the school.

Get rid of the hurricane windows with broken seals that were opaque with mold. Fix the leaky roof. Clean up the mildew that made the halls smell. Fix the lights in the library so it was bright enough for children to read.

In the past two years, parents and teachers say, the school building has experienced a major turnaround and is becoming an oasis in Lacoochee.

The children in the community need a school that's beautiful, she said. The area is poor - almost 86 percent of students there receive free or reduced price lunch, and the Pasco County Sheriff's Office stepped up patrols this summer to deal with a rise in drug-related crime.

"I'm not the type of person to sit still and not let our children here not have the same opportunities as other children in the county," she said.

Marler, 56, knows what it's like to grow up poor in Lacoochee. As a girl, she moved around a lot. Her dad worked in construction and moved to where the work was. She started to work in the fields when she was 10.

At the end of the sixth grade, she came to live with her grandmother and went to Lacoochee Elementary full time. They didn't have much. They used a wood-burning stove for cooking and for heat, and there was an outhouse out back .

Still, Marler says her childhood was full of joy. Swimming in the river, walking through the woods to get to the rodeo, rolling in fields of flowers - those are memories that she cherishes.

"We were never afraid," she said. "We knew our neighbors."

She wishes it were the same for her students now. When she was a girl, there was substance abuse in the community, but it was alcohol, not methamphetamines.

"You see the children, some of the pain they bring in from the issues," she said.

It's not unheard of to see drug deals occur in the intersections around the school, said sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin.

"There has been a concentrated effort to take the drugs off the streets in and around that school in Lacoochee," Tobin said of the increased patrols that started this summer. "If you are dealing drugs in and around that school area, you should look in your rear view mirror, because you are going to go to jail."

This summer, violent crime from the area has made the news. In late July, Chanel Cato, 31, and her father Ponce Cato, 54, were shot at their home, but survived. Eighteen-year-old Jonaey Peyton was arrested for the crime. Also in July, two teens from Wesley Chapel, Derek Pieper, 17, and Raymond Veluz, 18, were slain on a remote Trilby road, a few miles away from Lacoochee. The Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office said the investigation of their deaths is still ongoing. And earlier this month, Luis Angel Rivera, 23, was arrested for the death of William Medley, 72, at his home on Franklin Drive in Lacoochee.

The community's reputation has made it tough to recruit teachers, Marler said, even though there has never been an incident at the school.

To change the community, Marler has spearheaded a community action task force. Community leaders meet regularly to brainstorm how to improve the area. And to change the school, Marler pushed for $1.3-million from the school district to make improvements. The bulk of the renovations started about a year ago, and continue today. Much of the funding came from Penny for Pasco, a 1-cent on the dollar sales tax increase to build and expand schools, improve roads, buy conservation land and pay for city projects.

"It was a mess," said Ray Gadd, the assistant superintendent for support services. "It's important to make sure your community school is not in disrepair, to get the building back up to speed as the community deserves."

Janice Wells, an instructional assistant who has worked at the school since 1994, said every change in the school - from the mold removal to the new carpets - is noticed by the students and staff.

"We are proud of our dwelling," Wells said.

Andria Hernandez, the parent involvement coordinator at Lacoochee Elementary, said that the school is the place to start to improve the entire community.

"If you make a difference in the child's life, then that will reach the family," she said.

Marler wants to keep working to make Lacoochee Elementary a place where kids feel safe and secure - to feel like an extended family.

"They have so much support here, they don't know what to do with it," she said.

[Last modified September 17, 2006, 23:05:00]