By B.C. Manion
When school bells ring this fall in Pasco County public schools, the campuses at Wiregrass Ranch High and John Long Middle School will feel more spacious.
That’s because the Pasco County School Board unanimously approved a plan recommended by a boundary committee to change attendance areas for the schools.
The new plan also sends students living in the Cox Elementary attendance area to Pasco Middle and Pasco High, instead of busing them to Weightman Middle and Wesley Chapel High.
In approving the changes, board members praised the work of a boundary committee made up of district administrators, district staff, school principals and parents.
In essence, the new boundaries will:
— Shift students in New River, Ashley Pines and an area near Morris Bridge Road from Wiregrass Ranch High to Wesley Chapel High
— Reassign students from New River and Ashley Pines from John Long Middle School into Weightman Middle School
— Shift students living in neighborhoods west of Morris Bridge Road into Stewart Middle School
— Assign students attending Cox Elementary in Dade City to Pasco Middle and Pasco High schools, instead of Weightman Middle and Wesley Chapel High.
Wiregrass Ranch High, at 2909 Mansfield Blvd., has 2,132 students, representing 127 percent of the school’s permanent capacity. It has 18 portable classrooms.
John Long Middle, at 2025 Mansfield Blvd., has an enrollment of 1,784 students, which represents 134 percent of the school’s permanent capacity. It has 23 portable classrooms.
In recommending the new boundaries, the committee considered such things as impacts to the district’s transportation and special education services, as well as the socioeconomic makeup of the schools.
It also attempted to avoid splitting neighborhoods and considered such things as school feeder patterns and future growth.
The boundary changes will not affect incoming seniors at Wiregrass Ranch High.
It will, however, affect all school choice students who attend a school affected by a boundary change, Williams said.
All of those students will have to reapply for the choice assignment, Hurley said. Even incoming seniors at Wiregrass will have to reapply for a choice assignment, she said.
The district now has less flexibility in choice assignments because of the state’s class size limits, Hurley said.
However, the board said if an 11th grader had been approved to come into a career academy, that student will get priority when they apply for school choice.
Just one parent turned out to object to the changes.
Simone Lowery, who lives Ashley Pines, appeared before the board asking it to consider a plan she had drafted that would have shifted children from other neighborhoods.
Williams said Lowery’s proposal would have a negative effect on school feeder patterns and would merely delay an eventual redrawing of school boundary lines when future growth occurs in the area.
Lowery told the board that when drawing future boundaries it should reach out to include not only parents who have children in the district’s schools, but also those who live in the affected communities — even if their children are not enrolled in the district’s schools.
After the meeting, Lowery said she was not surprised by the board’s action because she thought they would support the committee’s work. However, she added, “I did everything that I had to do.”
