Students, parents get a closer look at new Riverview high school
By LINDA CHION KENNEY
At Lennard High School in Ruskin last week, Dave Brown attended a first-look meet-up with students and parents assigned to attend the new high school set to open in Riverview in August.
Brown, the freshly named principal of “High School TTT” — as it will be known until Hillsborough school board members vote on a name Oct. 15 — hosted a similar meeting at East Bay High in Gibsonton on Sept. 25.
Once the school is named, Brown said he will meet with students at feeder schools — Shields, Eisenhower and Barrington middle schools; and East Bay and Lennard high schools, primarily, and Newsome and Durant, to a much lesser extent — to help determine school colors and a mascot. Board approval for those measures is expected in November.
The school will open as the largest public school in Hillsborough County, with 450 spots reserved for sixth-graders by choice, to help relieve overcrowding at Shields, primarily. Entering sixth-graders will have the option to continue at the new school for grades 7 and 8 as well.
Brown said the choice application period opens at 5 p.m. Oct. 25, and runs through Dec. 31. Deadlines for additional application periods have yet to be determined.
While most parents and students in attendance at Lennard seemed excited for the August 2020 opening of the 2,900-student school, at 10650 Balm Road, some were more hesitant to give a full committal.
Brown had a ready answer for their concerns.
“You need to come and take a look because it’s something special to open a new school,” he said.
Brown has experience in that regard, having opened Strawberry Crest High School in Dover in 2009, as charter principal, and Freedom High in New Tampa in 2002, as assistant principal for curriculum.
“That is actually awesome,” said student Nalia Rosario, at the Lennard meeting. “It’s a great accomplishment. He should be proud of himself.”
Rosario, an incoming freshman, said she is looking forward to being a first-year student at a brand new school.
“It’s like a fresh start,” she said, noting her interest in sports, dual-enrollment classes and the Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) Diploma. The new school will be the only high school in the county to offer the international curriculum and examination system that emphasizes broad and balanced study to ensure college-ready students.
“When you enter a new school, it’s like a new start to make the school yours,” she said. “I have a lot of ideas for what the school can do.”
Brown said he has an open-door policy, ready to hear from the community at his administration trailer, which is coming shortly to school grounds, and in the new school itself when it gets turned over to school officials. That is expected to happen in June.
At the Lennard meeting, Brown covered many of the new school’s major selling points, including its construction highlights, with built-in safety features; a queue that holds 92 vehicles, the largest in the county, to keep more traffic off local streets while students arrive and depart; a turf sports field and a volleyball net that retracts into the ceiling in the school gymnasium.
“I’m very excited for the new school,” said Rosa Rosario, Nalia’s mother. “I’m hoping we have a very good staff of teachers, which is likely, given we have a very good principal.”
Joe Walters, an aide for District 7 (countywide) Hillsborough County Commissioner Kimberly Overman, was in attendance and promised to report back to the commissioner concerns about traffic in the area of the new school. He also noted that as a student at Freedom High, his tenure there overlapped with Brown’s for one year.
“I did not know him as a student, but he knows how to run a meeting, which I respect,” Walters said. “He seems like he not only knows what he’s doing but genuinely cares about the students. He seems like a great guy and a great principal whom both student and parents will be able to get along with”
School boundaries for High School TTT have been set and were on display at the Lennard meeting, along with a map and artist renderings of the facility itself.
To determine if a child is set to attend the school, visit sdhc.k12.fl.us and type in your home address. The school opens with grades 9 through 11 in keeping with school district policy to allow 12th graders to graduate at their home schools.