HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Hillsborough County is set to open four new schools in the 2020-2021 school year.
The school formerly known as Lee Elementary will re-open as Tampa Heights Elementary. The school was badly damaged in a fire and insurance paid for it to be reconstructed. There are 399 student stations in the new Tampa Heights Elementary.
The newly-named Sumner High School will open in South Hillsborough County on the North side of Balm Road, just east of US Highway 30. The new high school will offer relief to both of the neighboring schools, according to the district.
Sumner will be designed with enrollment for close to 3,000 students. The school will cost an estimated $70 million to build and will be the biggest high school opened in the history of Hillsborough County Schools.
A new middle school will also open in the same location, with room for 500 kids.
HILLSBOROUGH NEWS | The latest headlines from Hillsborough County
A new elementary school "D" will also open in South County (Belmont).
This comes as the families continue to move into the popular South Hillsborough County area.
The top single family communities developing in the Hillsborough County comprise of South Fork, Cypress Creek, Belmont, Waterset, and Triple Creek, according to the Hillsborough County Public Schools Annual Growth Management Report.
More specifically, south Hillsborough County had the highest number of single family housing starts in the Tampa Bay housing market with 4,511 units from July 1st, 2018 to June 30th, 2019, which has decreased from 10,132 in 2017, according to the report.
However, all this comes as the District enrollment decreased by 967 students over the last year. District reports say this trend could be because of increasing charter school and virtual school enrollments, which complicates planning for future needs and facilities.
Elementary school enrollment decreased by 2,862 elementary students over the last three years, with a loss of 1,636 students in the last year.
However, for past three consecutive years the district experienced slight growth in the middle school level of 1,895 students, which includes the addition of 878 in the last year.
Enrollment at the high school level saw a slightly decrease from 2017-18 to 2018-19 school years by 128 students.
