Groundbreaking puts Parrish closer to getting its own high school

Manatee County has six traditional high schools, but only one — Palmetto High — is located north of the Manatee River.

But a change to that ratio was put into motion at 11 a.m. Tuesday when School District of Manatee County officials turned dirt on the $90 million North River High School, on 98 acres at the southeast corner of Martha Road and Erie Road, in the heart of the rapidly growing community of Parrish.

About 18 months from now, North River High is scheduled to be a two-story facility with a brick exterior.

With classes proposed to start there in August 2019, the first students will be ninth- and 10th-graders from communities now served by Lakewood Ranch, Braden River and Palmetto high schools.

The school capacity will be 2,000 students with the ability to expand to 2,400, said School District of Manatee Superintendent Diana Greene, one of four officials who spoke on a sunny morning under a tent set up for the groundbreaking.

North River, which is the first new high school built by the school district since Braden River opened in 2005, will be the first high school in Manatee County to have an automotive tech academy, Greene said.

The school will also feature a 4,000-seat football and soccer stadium with a rubberized track capable of hosting state competitions.

A tip of the cap to citizens

Greene opened her speech by thanking the residents of Manatee County.

“If the citizens had not voted to extend the half-cent sales tax, this high school would not be a reality for this community,” Greene said. “And this community has asked for this high school for a very long time.”

Coincidentally, around the same time as the groundbreaking, Manatee County commissioners were giving the OK for the school district to hold a special election in March, when Manatee voters will decide on a 1-mill school tax increase to be used to raise teacher salaries, add more supportive staff in classrooms and increase the length of the school day by 30 minutes.

North River High’s curriculum, with its special attention paid to what used to be called vocational education, will be a boon to the entire county, said Jacki Dezelski, president and chief executive officer of the Manatee County Chamber of Commerce.

“From a workforce perspective it’s wonderful,” Dezelski said. “Here you have a brand new facility which will offer the best when it comes to technology for students who will soon become our workforce in Manatee County.”

Dezelski was speaking not only of North River’s first-ever high school automotive tech program, but also academies for robotics, allied nursing and TV broadcasting in a working studio. There will also be concentrations in agriculture, including a pole barn area and engineering.

Zoning to be discussed

Manatee school board member and Parrish resident Gina Messenger attended the groundbreaking with her 2-year-old daughter Olivia, a potential future North River High student. Parents are understandably very interested, Messenger said, in how the zoning and school choice will work at North River High.

“I don’t believe school choice is available yet,” Messenger said. “But I know that at the next school board meeting (Nov. 14) there is going to be a discussion on the zoning for this school, which are conversations that will be important for the community to be part of, so they have a say in the zones and who will be able to attend here. There will be choice available.”

Greene told the crowd of roughly 40, including school board members and other local dignitaries, that when she thinks about her education the first thing she thinks about is her high school, which was Vanguard High in Marion County.

“I probably remember more days in that high school than I do in any other part of my academic career,” Greene added. “High school is home, and for North River High School to be that home for thousands of students is what we need to do for a community. It’s the right thing to do.”

The superintendent said that the 2,000 students at North River will one day look forward to Friday night football and Wednesday night club events, like band practice.

“They will call this place home, and to know that we are going to move the dirt it is so exciting,” Greene said

Workforce ready

One of the unique features of North River High is that it will be “workforce ready.”

The architectural firm, SchenkelShultz Architecture, and the builder, Gilbane Building Corp., have partnered in the past in Manatee to build Braden River High and Buffalo Creek Middle School.

“It’s a reuse of architectural components from other high schools,” said Ken Dean, a partner with SchenkelShultz Architecture. “North River will have elements from other schools, including Braden River High. In fact, the educational classroom buildings are from a school we are just finishing in the Orlando area with Gilbane called Boggy Creek.”

Manatee officials asked Dean to reproduce the robotics lab that he designed for the high school in Boggy Creek, Dean said.

“The automotive tech program is similar to the Suncoast Technical College, where we designed a major tech program, and we shared some images of the tech lab with officials here and they said, ‘We want to put that here too.’ So North River is a replication of some of those programs.”

Pleased residents

Parrish Civic Association President Gretchen Fowler has been personally calling the school board since 2013, asking for a high school.

“It is so nice that they finally paid attention and are getting this school going,” said a smiling Fowler, who took photos of the groundbreaking.

Fowler’s son, Colby, 10, is in the fifth grade at Mills Elementary School and is now going to have a high school close by that he can attend, his mom said.

“We already have the growth,” Fowler said when asked how the high school will change Parrish, which has had an explosion of home development over the past decade. “We have many developments coming to this area. One of the issues we are trying to address with the county and school board is the fact that we have kids who will be living within two miles of here who will be forced to walk or drive to the school. They will not be bused. And we do not have the roads to support this traffic.

“So we are really happy the high school is coming, but we really need to address the safety of these kids,” Fowler added.

This story was originally published November 7, 2017 at 1:28 PM with the headline "Groundbreaking puts Parrish closer to getting its own high school."