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Parents and educators are working on a plan to let students who have been bused across town go to new schools in Nine Eagles.
By LOGAN D. MABE
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 30, 2001
TOWN 'N COUNTRY -- After more than a decade as part of the school district's lone "white satellite," children in Timberlane may get a chance to go to a school in Keystone rather than an inner-city school across town.
For the first time, students in the integrated neighborhood may be able to attend either a new elementary school or middle school, both of which are being built in the Nine Eagles area.
For months, a committee of parents and educators has been working on boundary proposals and attendance zones for the new schools. In all of their discussions, the Timberlane and Colonial Coach neighborhoods were left out of the mix.
That's because students there have been subjected to forced busing since the early 1990s as part of the district's court-ordered desegregation plan. Whenever a new school was built anywhere nearby, district officials said their hands were tied by that court order. Children were bused about 13 miles to Lockhart Elementary, near the now-demolished College Hill public housing complex; and Roland Park Middle School in the shadow of Tampa International Airport.
But since the order was lifted last year, school officials are free to consider allowing Timberlane children to attend other schools near the community. A plan for elementary pupils will include Bryant Elementary as an option. Options for middle school students will include Farnell and Davidsen middle schools. Bryant and Farnell are new schools set to open in the fall of 2002.
Pupil assignment director Bill Person said the option is now open because Timberlane students are zoned in a "feeder pattern" ultimately to attend Alonso High School, the new high school just outside the neighborhood. Student assignments follow "cluster plans," in which children move from an elementary to a middle and then a high school, more or less as a unit. Previously, Timberlane students were in the Jefferson High cluster, but will now attend Alonso High.
That's welcome news to Carlton Lewis, a Timberlane parent and staunch opponent of busing.
"For 10 years, I've been telling them that Timberlane in an integrated community," Lewis said. "We're the largest concentration of black people in unincorporated Hillsborough County; 34 percent black and 66 percent the rest of it. We've been used all along in this desegregation plan. But with the court order being lifted, if we can't go to the closest school, then I think it's the vestiges of segregation raising its head again."
Until last week, Timberlane and Colonial Coach students had been excluded from all of the attendance zone proposals for the two new schools. Now, at least one plan including them will be considered.
The plans will be presented to the public at a special community meeting at 7 p.m. Dec. 4 at Alonso High School.
"We're the ones there shouldn't be any question about if it's about racial balance," Lewis said. "Timberlane is an ideal group. I have no problem with my son going to Roland Park because I think every school in this district offers a good education. But let's let our kids attend a neighborhood school. If Nine Eagles is a lot closer, let's go there."
- Logan D. Mabe can be reached at (813) 226-3464 or at mabe@sptimes.com.