Racing to keep up

Reacting to explosive growth in Westchase, education officials push forward the timetable for building elementary schools.

By LOGAN D. MABE

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 30, 2000

WESTCHASE -- Linda Connolly's children aren't even in school yet, but she has a keen interest in plans to bring a new elementary school to northwest Hillsborough.

"This area is just growing so fast," said Connolly, a Westchase resident whose child won't be in kindergarten until next year. "There must be something in the water. It seems like everyone's having babies."

Between the explosive growth in housing and young families moving into the area, school district officials quickly revamped their long-term building plans and announced last week that they were moving ahead on building a new school on Nine Eagles Drive north of Race Track Road.

"This has been fairly quick," said Jack Smith, assistant superintendent for operations. "We've been ardently pursuing a site since at least July."

Tentatively, district officials have selected a 58-acre site just north of Race Track and west of Nine Eagles. The land, owned by Reptron Electronics, was once planned to hold an expansion of Tri-County Business Park. In the last year, much of that parcel has been snapped up by home developers as the area has shifted from commercial to residential.

Initial plans are to build an elementary school there that could open either in the middle of the 2001 school year or August 2002. The site is big enough for an additional middle school, which likely will be built in the next four to five years, officials said.

Wednesday night, School Board officials hosted at open house at Westchase Elementary to introduce the idea to about 60 residents. The public meeting was the first step in the long process to put a new school on the map.

"It was a good meeting," said Lara Carnow, an urban planner with WisonMiller, the engineering firm researching the acquisition. "The comments were real favorable. Usually you have a few dissenters, but at this one we didn't hear any negatives."

That the meeting was held at Westchase Elementary was no coincidence. The new school is being proposed as a remedy to the overcrowding that has plagued Westchase Elementary virtually since it opened.

Built to accommodate 886 students, Westchase started this school year with 1,032. After 16 weeks, enrollment was up to 1,057. And as of last month, the school had 1,075 students, more than 20 percent over capacity.

"We realized we had a problem coming," said Bill Person, the district's director of pupil administration. "The Westchase Elementary PTA has called me two or three times to let me know that they're concerned about growth."

School district officials had the new elementary school on its long range radar, but with the housing boom in Westchase and more expansion on the horizon to the north and west of that community, it became a critical need.

The school was put on a fast track, too, because of the hundreds of homes that will be coming to the area in the near term.

A half-dozen developments are either planned or under way within a one-mile radius of the Race Track and Nine Eagles intersection. In all, the county has approved rezoning requests for more than 3,000 homes in that area.

"I have to get a sufficient number of kids out of Westchase, but I've got to balance the schools and that's hard to do based on projected growth," Person said. "But the positive part is, we brought you your new elementary three to four years earlier."

Davis said easing the overcrowding at Westchase doesn't make that school a special case. Rather, he said, the district is building schools throughout the county at a speedy clip, wherever the need arises.

"We're building elementary schools in the New Tampa area left and right," Davis said. "And we're looking for a site to relieve Cannella and Crestwood elementaries, if someone can help us find some land. We've had problems finding a site."

-- Logan D. Mabe can be reached at 226-3464 or mabe@sptimes.com.

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