ON THE RADAR
More students means new construction for the School District of Lee County
Keeping Up With Growth
When the new school year starts this August, Lehigh Senior High School will unveil an addition offering new classroom space and serving as the new home for Lee County’s largest Junior ROTC program. It’s part of a $13 million project at the school that also includes renovations to existing facilities to increase classroom space, expand the health clinic and redesign the school’s entry area.
When everything is completed, Lehigh Senior High School will no longer need its 16 portable classrooms and will be able to accommodate 2,545 students, making it the largest high school in Lee County. Its Academy of Digital & Media Arts will move into a new space, and the school will introduce a culinary academy to help train and certify students for jobs right out of high school.
“The renovation and building project will certainly enhance and improve what we have,” says principal Jackie Corey. “But it will also give us adequate space to deliver education the way it needs to be, without portables or using spaces that weren’t necessarily meant to be classrooms. I think it’s going to be an exceptional campus when this is done, almost like a little college.”
The eastern part of Lee County is where the school district is seeing the most growth in student populations. “It’s just booming right now,” says Corey. “If you go up and down the Treeline [Avenue] corridor, houses are just flying up everywhere.”
That’s why preconstruction activities are underway for a new high school in the Gateway area and a new middle school in Lehigh. Actual construction of the middle school will begin in spring 2020, with the school opening in August 2021. An
elementary school is also planned for the same site, likely opening two years later.
Site work could start this summer for the new Gateway high school, with construction likely to begin in January 2020. A freshman class for the new school will be established in the no-longer-needed portables at Lehigh Senior High School, and those students will move over to the new Gateway high school when it opens in August 2021.
“We did the same thing when we opened Bonita Springs High School [in 2018],” says Rob Spicker, assistant director of media relations and public information for the School District of Lee County. “It’s all about the east-zone growth and meeting the expected student population east of I-75.”
These projects will benefit from the half-cent sales tax increase that narrowly passed in the county in the November 2018 midterm election. The school district’s initial projections estimated that the tax increase will bring in about $59 million a year, rising yearly to a total of $754 million over 10 years. It plans to use the funds for school safety initiatives, ongoing maintenance and construction and renovation projects.
“The tax revenue is vital to us for keeping up with growth and building the schools we need,” says Spicker. “It also allows us to continually improve safety and security. A project to update the security cameras in all our schools can now happen in just three years instead of five, because of the anticipated tax revenue.”
Increases in enrollment show no signs of stopping in the district. For the 2018-19 school year, enrollment stands at 83,064 students. That’s up from 76,973 in 2014-15. For the 2023-24 school year, enrollment is projected to grow to 90,176 students.
“Growth has an impact districtwide,” says Spicker. “We need the schools and classroom space to fit the students into. We need to hire enough teachers to teach. We need to hire enough bus drivers and have enough buses to transport those students.”
Another thing that keeps growing in Lee County? Graduation rates. For the 2017-18 school year, the graduation rate was 82.8 percent. That’s a 4.1 percent increase from the year before and the highest level ever attained by the district.
Several reasons account for the increase, including a districtwide goal of a 90 percent graduation rate by 2020 and a revised early warning system to help identify at-risk students. The district has also been looking at the challenges faced by students who aren’t native English speakers and will be rolling out a new mentoring program down the road.
“We know that for students who have a high school diploma, their income is greater,” says Shellie Taylor, graduation coordinator for the district. “When you look at the impact of that, of course a diploma means a lot. Without that diploma, it really limits what the students are able to do.”
Graduation rates also impact the community as a whole, affecting everything from tax revenue to the connection residents have to their community. “Students who graduate from high school have longer life expectancies,” says Taylor. “They’re more likely to vote and volunteer. There’s a real impact in the community. Sometimes I think we tend to lose sight of that, but it’s why we do what we do.”