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Building boom
By LENNIE BENNETT and DONNA WINCHESTER
© St. Petersburg Times,
And unlike the past, the growth in Pinellas County schools is driven not by a significant increase in student enrollment but by the redistribution of the existing population. That redistribution will happen over the next decade as court-ordered busing for desegregation ends and a new choice plan begins. It will allow students to attend schools closer to their homes. By the summer of 2003, when all 19 current projects are expected to be completed, Pinellas County will have 11 new schools replacing aging ones and three additional schools. All but the Paul B. Stephens Exceptional Student Education Center are located in mid- or south Pinellas. Three more north county schools and two south county schools are in varying stages of renovation and expansion. The focus on improving south county schools is part of the agreement reached by the Pinellas County School Board and the NAACP legal defense fund to end a 1971 court order that desegregated county schools by busing students to achieve racial quotas. The new plan phases in school choice that will allow families to shop around for a school within an assigned zone, then pick one through a lottery. The plan does not affect fundamental schools or magnet programs. Funding comes from several sources, "the most visible source being the 2-mill tax levy, which will raise more than $80-million," said Doug Forth, the district's budget director. That tax is imposed at the discretion of the School Board, in addition to a 6.4-mill tax for operating expenses. Bonds, which are issued by the state "as the money is needed," Forth said, generate millions more dollars. Most of the new south county schools are in a densely populated section of St. Petersburg with higher numbers of black students. The additional school seats will accommodate children no longer being bused from their neighborhoods to achieve racial balances who will likely chose to attend schools closer to homes. And, the school board hopes, the new facilities will lure white students from other neighborhoods, resulting in voluntary integration. The bells and whistles all the new schools will have include Category 5 wiring, said Tony Rivas, the school district's facilities director, "which is state of the art. You can do a lot of things with it. The schools have to buy equipment based on their level of instructional technology." They also will be wired for surveillance systems. Rivas said "there is no rule of thumb" governing the extent of the security system. "Video implementation is done school by school, usually worked out between the school and the campus police. It really depends of a lot of issues and the grade level. In some situations, things are recorded and someone looks at it later. In other situations, you would have someone sitting in a room monitoring it." No elementary schools in Pinellas, not even the new ones, have gyms, but the trend is toward "covered play areas," Rivas said, that are "a concrete pad with a roof over it." In all schools, cafeterias will continue to be designed as multipurpose areas with folding partitions. What many new schools will not have are restroom doors. "Airport restrooms don't have bathroom doors," Rivas said. "We've been using that plan in middle schools and high schools since 1981 and it has evolved. It's more a space issue than security. If you have doors and you're off a hallway, they have to swing out. They become a challenge." All new elementary school classrooms will have their own restrooms, he said. And while all schools will have hot water, it will only be piped into certain areas "where it's necessary," said Rivas, "such as showers." New continues to mean big. Seven of the nine new elementary schools will have student enrollments of almost 800. All four middle school populations will exceed 1,000; some are designed for as many as 1,600 students. The new Gibbs High School will hold almost 2,500 students. In comparison, Shorecrest Preparatory School, the largest private school in Pinellas County, has 880 students total, 3-year-olds through 12-graders. For most of its 89-year history, Pinellas County built new schools in response to dramatic spikes in the student population. It began, in 1912, with 22 schools. Growth was steady for eight years and then, beginning in 1920, exploded. Between 1920 and 1927, the county paid for construction of 33 schools, spurred by a student enrollment that grew from about 5,500 to almost 19,000 during those years. Another construction binge took place after World War II ended, under the stewardship of school superintendent Floyd Christian. During his 17-year tenure, which ended in 1965 when he became state school superintendent, the student population had mushroomed to 69,000 students with 64 new schools to accommodate them. Nearly nine decades after its birth, Pinellas County is close to being built out. Census figures show a population increase of only 8.2 percent since 1990, compared to double-digit growth in many other Florida counties. The school-age population has grown by less than 20,000 students during the decade, from a little more than 93,000 in 1990 to about 112,000 students officials estimate will attend grades K-12 this school year, according to figures supplied by Kathy Walker, director of pupil assignment. Even so, Rivas said Pinellas County will probably always have major school construction projects in some stage of development. "Since I came here in 1992," said Rivas, "growth has never been the issue it has been for counties like Broward or Hillsborough. Some of them get 15,000 new students each year compared to maybe 2,000 or 3,000 here. But we have not dropped below $150-million in active projects. We're doing a lot of replacement facilities because there are new standards and new expectations. Growth will continue, but not because of new students but because of quality issues." - Staff writer Kelly Ryan contributed to this story. Frequently called telephone numbers
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