They turned out in the middle of spring break week, many with signs in tow featuring messages like “Keep Pizzo” and lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what it’s got ‘til it’s gone?”
The goal of the teachers, parents, students, staff and community members who gathered Wednesday at Temple Terrace’s Rotary Riverfront Park was to help save their school, Pizzo K-8, which Hillsborough’s school board is likely to close, along with two others, in April.
The district said last week that Pizzo, which leases space at the University of South Florida, and two other schools, Graham Elementary and Monroe Middle, are likely to close due to shifting boundaries designed to “improve fiscal and operational responsibility.”
While other schools are struggling with low enrollment, members of the school community said Pizzo had a robust enrollment of 900 students. They called on USF to reconsider its decision in 2024 to increase the school’s lease from $60,000 a year to what would amount to more than $8 million over 10 years.
Dan Wolfe, a kindergarten teacher at Pizzo with a first grader there, said he was “gobsmacked” by the decision, but optimistic it wasn’t final given that a new president had recently started at USF.
“I think that this gives President (Moez) Limayem an opportunity to show that his investment in our community is more than just lip service,” he said. “This is an opportunity. This is an easy win, man, like, ‘Save the kids.’”
Ben Braver, a master’s student at USF who is running for the state House of Representatives in District 65, helped organize an online petition, which has received more than 200 signatures.
Braver said he believed the construction of a new USF football stadium nearby was behind the move.
“The chair of our board of trustees said this stadium will bring the community together,” he said. “Is that what it’s doing? The first act from this stadium is to evict 900 kids.”
USF spokesperson Althea Johnson said the university and the school district had been involved in discussions for three years before the 2024 decision was made.
“USF recognizes the importance of our partnerships with local school districts,” she said in an email statement.
The new rent rates were more closely aligned with USF’s other on-campus sublease rates, Johnson said, while the district’s previous rate had been set in the 1990s.
Johnson said Pizzo’s building is about 30 years old and required significant maintenance and repair, including a new roof and HVAC updates. Those costs, she said, would have fallen on the school district, and the school district opted to demolish the building at the end of the lease. The university has not determined what to do with the land yet, she said.
Danielle Clark, a school counselor at the school for more than 15 years whose son also attended the school, said the small class sizes and long-lasting bonds between students and teachers make the school a unique environment. She said she hopes the district is able to keep the school together if USF does not reconsider.
“It’s not a normal school,” she said. “I’ve taught at several schools over my 15-year career and there’s no place like this. It’s a family.”
Eighth grader Blake Marsh said the small class sizes are important to build relationships with teachers at Pizzo.
“You can’t find the deep level of connections we have with students to teachers at other schools, because other schools are busting at the seams, overcrowded and the teachers are stressed out because they have so many students,” he said.
Others called on the district to slow down its process. Gianny Hunt, with the education nonprofit Magnified Voices, said she felt the move to close the school blindsided many.
“We are asking for a pause,” she said. “We are asking for a seat at the negotiation table, and we are asking for the decisions to be made with the students in mind, with the teachers in mind and with the community in mind.”
Robert Sherman, a community member attended the rally to support Pizzo but also call attention to Sulfur Springs K-8, which the district also moved to a K-5, citing low enrollment in the upper grades.
“We’ve got to think longevity,” he said. “We can’t think here and now. If we don’t really sit down and evaluate this situation, we could be making a detrimental mistake over in a community that needs education.”
Divya Kumar is a reporter covering education as a member of the Tampa Bay Times Education Hub. You can contribute to the hub through our journalism fund by clicking here.
