TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Park Use Urged For School Playground

ADVERTISEMENT

By KENNETH KNIGHT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 23, 2008

TEMPLE CREST - Kimbell Elementary School is the newest status symbol in this 84-year-old community. Gerald White wants to make sure it becomes a neighborhood treasure.

The Temple Crest resident is asking for greater police presence around the school when it opens for the new school year in August. He also wants the Hillsborough County School District to consider permitting the school playground to be used as a park to serve neighborhood children after school, weekends and during the summer.

"Once the school opens, kids are going to migrate to the basketball court," White said last week at the Temple Crest Civic Association meeting.

He petitioned two Tampa Police Department representatives who attended the meeting for additional after-school and weekend security. They urged him to contact commanders at the Tampa Police Department's District 2 Office on 30th Street.

"This is a new investment in our community," White said.
Kimbell Elementary is being built on the former site of Temple Heights Baptist Church and Christian School. The school district bought the church and Christian school, community icons for 50 years, last year to ease overcrowding at nearby elementary schools.

The church and school were torn down in December to make way for the new school, named in honor of former Hillsborough County Commissioner Sylvia Rodriguez Kimbell, who died of cancer in 1994, while serving in office.

The school will open at 46th Street and Regnas Avenue on Aug. 18 and serve about 600 students. Sheryl Marceaux has left her leadership post at Pizzo Elementary to become principal at Kimbell.

White's proposal to use the Kimbell Elementary playground as a park sounds like a good idea to Steve Hegarty, spokesman for the Hillsborough County School District.

"We have agreements like that at several schools," Hegarty said. "I don't know of anything like that in the works at Kimbell."

Such a request, Hegarty said, would typically come from the city, which would then be required to staff the facility. That is the case at schools in New Tampa, Carrollwood and Town 'N Country, to name a few, he said.

"We are open to it, but we have not been approached, Hegarty said.
Kimbell Elementary will serve students who live south of Busch Boulevard, east of 37th Street, west of 50th Street and north of the Hillsborough River. About 269 students would come from Pizzo Elementary and about 245 from Forest Hills Elementary, taking both schools below their enrollment capacity.

Students living in Kimbell Elementary's attendance boundary could still apply to attend magnet programs, such as at nearby Cahoon Elementary.

Terry Neal, president of the Temple Crest Civic Association, said the civic group supports the idea of extra security at the new school.

"We should report all problems in the neighborhood as quickly as possibly," he said.

Neal, White and other members of the civic association have petitioned Tampa police and city council members to install additional safety precautions at 46th and Regnas when the school opens.

They expressed concerns that the two-way stop signs on Regnas Avenue are insufficient to serve the needs of a new school.

Reporter Kenneth Knight can be reached at (813) 865-4842 or kknight@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT