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Schools

Planned school targets overflow at 3 others

The new building would ease overcrowding at Durant, Armwood and Plant City high schools. But don't order the desks yet. Land purchase and the plan's approval must happen first.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published October 20, 2006

In official documents, eastern Hillsborough County's next high school is known simply as UUU.

To students and staffers at three crowded high schools, it's likely to be known as sweet relief.

By the 2009-2010 school year, about 2,000 students will begin classes at the new school near McIntosh Road between Interstate 4 and U.S. 92 in Dover.

On Oct.10, the Hillsborough County School Board gave the go-ahead to buy two pieces of land and start planning for the new school.

The hope, school officials say, is that the new school will alleviate overcrowding at nearby Durant, Armwood and Plant City high schools.

"We haven't drawn the boundaries yet, but those are the areas we're planning to draw from," said Lorraine Duffy Suarez, the district's director of growth management.

All three of the schools have more students than they were designed to handle.

Forty days into the school year, Armwood was at 103 percent of its capacity with 1,985 students. Plant City's 2,965 students put it at 109 percent of capacity. Durant had 2,795 students attending a school designed for 2,352. A new wing added recently at Durant upped its capacity to 2,577.

Crowding to worsen

School officials expect the overcrowding to get worse in the coming years.

"We see growth occurring, especially as Plant City annexes more property," said Steve Ayers, the district's director of pupil administration. "And if you go out of Durant and look east, you see nothing but open fields."

School officials figure some of those open fields will be developed in the near future, Ayers said, and plan for new homes to bring additional students into the nearby schools.

At Durant alone, Ayers said, school officials are figuring that enrollment will grow by 158 students in the next two years.

Durant principal Pam Bowden said the new school can only mean good things for the students in her part of the county.

"I really don't know how it will affect us because we don't know where they're going to draw the boundaries," she said. "But it's obviously going to help with the overcrowding. It will mean shorter bus rides, less waiting in line in the lunchroom. It will make for easier parental involvement. We'll have lockers for every student. Right now if every student wanted a locker, we wouldn't have enough."

Additional wings planned for Armwood and Durant also will ease some of the crowding. Still, Ayers said, the area's ongoing, explosive growth should mean that the new school will have a healthy-sized student body when it opens in three years.

Plans could change

A lot has to happen between now and then, officials said, and it wouldn't be unprecedented for the plans to be canceled.

The first step, which is already under way, is for independent consultants to look at the property and the surrounding area and make sure it's suitable for a school.

Factors such as utilities, roads and nearby wetlands will all be considered.

Then, neighborhood meetings will be held to get input from residents. Finally, the planning commission and the county take all the information and make sure the new school fits with long-range development plans.

The whole process should take a few months, Suarez said.

But the whole idea could be halted at any point, she said. A few years ago, residents objected to three proposed locations for a new school in Lutz. School officials then tried to buy a fourth parcel, but by that time the land they wanted had been sold to Publix.

Ex-official sells land

The site for the new school currently belongs to two different owners. One of them is longtime School Board member Joe Newsome.

School Board attorney Tom Gonzalez said there was no legal reason not to proceed with the purchase because Newsome no longer serves on the board.

He noted that the district followed state policy by getting two appraisals on the property.

If the sale goes through, the school system will pay $3.8-million for Newsome's 34-acre parcel.

"From my point of view, I don't care who the land belongs to," Suarez said. "It went through the same procedure as every other piece of land we buy."

As for the name, Suarez said, it's part of a system that has been in place for years. Proposed high schools are designated by triple letters, and each new school gets the next letter in the alphabet. The next one after UUU will be VVV.

If rapid growth continues in Hillsborough County, it won't be long before the school system reaches the end of the alphabet. Suarez said she's not sure what will happen then.

"I guess we'll start over at the beginning of the alphabet," she said. "AAA is probably Hillsborough High School or something. We definitely won't have an XXX, I can tell you that."

[Last modified October 19, 2006, 07:58:40]