Many Pasco County students throughout the District are faced with the possibility of relocating to a new school for the 2017-18 school year.

Wiregrass Ranch High school (WRHS) principal, Robyn White, shared her knowledge about how this proposal was created.

“A committee made up of all principals from the affected schools came together to each select two parents to represent the affected schools at a meeting. District transportation, special needs office, CTE office, and area superintendents also came together to create a decision for the proposal,” says White.

The proposal was made to help with the overcrowding, and to help rezone students to the new middle-high school, “GGG”. Overall, this will help with the over crowding issue; however, there will be unintended consequences.

WRHS is one of the schools that will be most affected by this proposal. Being the only Pasco County School with an Orchestra and specific academies. Another downfall WRHS would face is losing star sports players, band members, and drama students.

WRHS will be going back to the 7-period-day with this new proposal, after being a 10 period day school for the past two years. The new change will help with bringing the class size and enrollment numbers back closer to capacity.

“It would bring our current school capacity of 163% to 105%,” explained White.

The overcrowding would not be completely solved in the first year of change, since current juniors will be grandfathered in so they can stay to finish out their senior year. Also the new neighborhoods being built by WRHS would affect the varying numbers as well. There is no solid guarantee that the change of zones will be a helpful problem solver, however, no one will know unless it is tried.

There will be a parent meeting on November 29th, at Wesley Chapel High School for students who might be affected, and the parents that have thoughts on the subject. After this meeting, the committee will come together one more time to see about any further changes to give to the School Board for finalization.

If you would like to keep updated on this process, please go to the Pasco County Schools District website.