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Schools

School to open doors . . . to portables

Collins Elementary's temporary site will open in August. Permanent buildings won't be ready until January.

By LETITIA STEIN
Published April 8, 2005

RIVERVIEW - Students slated to attend Collins Elementary School will pack into portable classrooms when the southeast Hillsborough County's newest campus opens Aug. 4.

Construction delays have pushed back the opening of Collins Elementary in the Panther Trace subdivision until January 2006. Until then, Collins will house about 850 students in temporary buildings.

"We will be setting up the principal and staff, and have students in portable classrooms at the site," said district facilities chief MaryEllen Elia.

The situation is likely to incense parents already frustrated by frequent schools moves, as their neighborhoods explode with new homes. Ten of the county's fastest-growing subdivisions lie within 3 miles of Sessums Elementary - a critically crowded school that Collins will relieve.

As officials race to build classrooms around the U.S. 301 corridor, students are flipping schools multiple times in their elementary years alone. Starting the year in portable classrooms at Collins compounds the inconvenience, parents say.

"That's ridiculous," said Darrell Works, a Panther Trace resident with two school-aged children slated for Collins. "The kids are just going to get shuffled around more."

Works wasn't surprised by the delay. When he drives by the school site at the end of Panther Trace Boulevard, all he sees is an empty field with mounds of dirt. Roads do not yet reach the school's future address at 12424 Summerfield Blvd.

For some time, Works has been convinced that Collins did not have a chance of opening by August. Now he wonders why school officials aren't planning better.

The district blames last year's hurricanes for much of the delay. Elia explained that demand for construction crews has soared in recent months. Building materials, such as steel and concrete, are limited. And the district ran into permitting delays.

An exacting construction timeline did not help. Collins was fast-tracked to relieve 2-year-old Sessums Elementary - which hit 120 percent of capacity this fall. Officials were racing to get Collins off the ground in less than one year.

"We knew that was going to be very, very adventurous," Elia said, noting that the delay is not expected to raise Collins' $10.5-million price tag.

At Collins, the district will complete a cafeteria building on the campus. It will be hardened as a storm shelter, with walkways to the portables. This will outfit the school with a safe place during storms. Each portable also will have its own restrooms.

Collins is not the only school facing construction delays. Turner Elementary in New Tampa will open in portables on a separate campus about 6 miles from its permanent home. The district pushed back to August 2006 the opening date for a new high school serving west Brandon, originally expected to open in the fall.

But Collins parents have reason to be especially frustrated. Families living south of Rhodine Road are being asked to fill portable classrooms on a construction site while their current school, Sessums, sits half empty.

School officials expect Collins to open at nearly 95 percent of capacity. Sessums would start the year at 46 percent of capacity with 435 students. Officials expect that Sessums will fill up quickly. They say Sessums will face problems later on if they don't leave room now.

District officials says it's only a matter of time before the region needs another elementary school - or two or three. That's little comfort to parents whose children already moved from Summerfield Elementary to Sessums - and are shifting two years later to Collins.

Michele Wirth, a parent with three children, is fed up. Her second-grader has been asked to change schools three times since the family moved into the Summerfield subdivision. The family now is slated to attend Collins. She has considered moving to a home adjacent to a school, so the family's boundaries would never change again.

For next year, she is ready to explore options like special assignment. Wirth doesn't have anything against portable classrooms, now a common feature of Florida's educational landscape. But she thinks they will add to the difficulty of getting a new school like Collins running.

"It's going to be the end of the school year before anybody starts to see any semblance of a routine over there," Wirth said. "That's not acceptable."

Letitia Stein can be reached at 661-2443 or lstein@sptimes.com

Staff writer Jeffrey S. Solochek contributed to this report.

[Last modified April 7, 2005, 08:55:10]