Hillsborough’s Apollo Beach Elementary will become a K-8 school

In a move reminiscent of last year’s school expansion in Original Carrollwood, the Hillsborough County School Board agreed Tuesday to add three middle school grades to Apollo Beach Elementary School.

The transition will begin in August with the addition of sixth grade. Another grade will be added every year until Apollo Beach is a K-8 school. Some of the students will learn in modular classrooms, which will cost the district $660,000 over three years.

As happened at Carrollwood Elementary last year, Apollo Beach families have been speaking regularly at school board meetings about the limited options for their middle school children.

“The community of Apollo Beach stands behind this initiative, and will not back down,” Colleen Bianucci, a leader in the parents’ group, said Tuesday.

Unlike the Carrollwood situation, the 6-1 decision did not happen without strong words and initial opposition.

Apollo Beach students are assigned to Eisenhower Middle, which is on State Road 672, three miles north of the elementary school. While rarely mentioning Eisenhower by name, the parents have made it clear that they find the school unacceptable for their children.

Eisenhower, with a D grade from the state, loses as many as 1,000 of its students each year to independently managed charter schools. This year, it lost 969 students to charter schools and another 309 enrolled in the district’s new York PreK-8 magnet school.

For students who remain at Eisenhower, fights or physical attacks are a frequent occurrence, according to data reported to the state. Eisenhower recently became part of the district’s Transformation Network, which provides extra resources for schools that struggle to maintain state educational standards.

In presenting the item for discussion, Superintendent Van Ayres did not mention Eisenhower’s problems. Instead, he cast the Apollo Beach expansion as “part of our overall plan to address growth in South County.”

However, several board members said the district needs to do more to improve Eisenhower. Patti Rendon, who cast the dissenting vote, said, “we don’t have a plan” for struggling schools in fast-growing southern Hillsborough. “Because if we had a plan, Eisenhower would not be in the Transformation Network.”

She called the modular classroom proposal “a Band-Aid” that will satisfy the people of Apollo Beach but leave thousands more students without a viable public school option. Like Eisenhower, Shields Middle School in Ruskin also loses many top students to charter schools and has a “D” from the state.

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Board member Jessica Vaughn, who voted for the Apollo Beach proposal, said she expects to see a detailed plan from the district to address the problems that have resulted in so many students leaving Eisenhower.

Member Nadia Combs, who also voted yes, warned Apollo Beach families in the audience that their children will not have the same breadth of experiences, including clubs and electives, that exist in traditional middle schools.

Ayres pushed back against Combs’ contention that modular classrooms would degrade the quality of education at the Apollo Beach school. He used the example of Tinker K-8 at MacDill Air Force Base, which was expanded a decade ago to satisfy military families.

“Modulars are something that we do,” he said. “I’m here to listen to our communities and our families, to provide the best quality of education for all our students.”

Much of the discussion concerned money, with board member Lynn Gray noting that the district has lost millions of dollars in state funds because so many Apollo Beach families send their children to charter schools.

“Sometimes this is the best we can do for our families,” said member Stacy Hahn. “They’re meeting us halfway. They’re not clamoring for a $15 million school. If we keep waiting for the perfect moment to solve a problem, it’s never going to come.”