Approve High School Attendance Boundary Changes (2015-2016)

The residential growth occurring in south Hillsborough County has been steady over the past decade, but has been rapidly increasing during the past two to three years.  These new homes bring new students that are overcrowding the area high schools, most notably East Bay, Riverview and Lennard.  A 20 classroom addition is under construction at Lennard High School, set to open in August 2015.

In November 2014, District staff proposed several preliminary attendance boundary changes designed to balance enrollment among the area high schools while allowing some space for additional population growth.  Some students have been proposed to move from East Bay and Riverview to Lennard, Spoto and Brandon.  A comprehensive outreach program was implemented in order to solicit input from families, students and the community on the preliminary boundary change proposal. (See stakeholder outreach summary on pages 3 and 4 attached)

Revision to original proposal

After soliciting, receiving and reviewing these comments, District staff made modifications to the preliminary boundary proposals in early January (see pages 1-3 for final proposal details).  The modified proposal would:

• Phase in the student reassignment, impacting only incoming 9th grade students for the 2015-2016 school year.  All currently enrolled high school students will be able to continue in their current schools through graduation.  This privilege would not extend to younger siblings.
• Leave unchanged two specific areas that were originally proposed to change to different high schools.

After the total implementation of this program in the 4th year, it is projected that Riverview, Lennard and East Bay would all be at their maximum capacity.

• Page 2 attached shows the enrollment implementation procedures that will be followed to phase the students into the newly assigned schools.
• Page 3 attached shows the projection data for the proposed boundary changes.
• Page 5 attached shows each of the areas proposed for attendance boundary changes.
• Pages 6-10 attached show the proposed new boundaries for Spoto, Brandon, Riverview, East Bay and Lennard High Schools

There is no financial impact.