The thing that bothered me more about the IB boundaries was that we lived about ONE mile from HHS but for my oldest to go to IB she would have had to walk to HHS, get on a bus, and ride that bus to King. Your tax dollars at work! She ended up at a private school. Who knows what will happen now that they have added another…

I was thrilled when my daughter started 6th grade at Davidsen middle school, just a stroll, not even a walk from my house. She could sleep as late as she wanted, take high level classes in a close environment, do things after school and there was no driving involved.

One problem, she HATED it. The teachers spent a disproportionate amount of time with the lower achieving students to get them ready for the FCAT. Although we would have been fine with her staying put (it was easy for us to corner the teachers if needed)after 7th grade she transferred to Williams Middle Pre-IB program(15 miles away).

Transportation to Williams was fine, we had a neighborhood car pool and relied nothing on the School for transportation. She was challenged there, but did little in extra curriculars.

After 8th grade, she was faced with a choice to go to the neighborhood school (Alonso) or to an IB school. We were hoping that IB school would be Hillsborough, which is 10 miles away, but the School Board decided that in order to populate Robinson with enough IB students, that all kids in the Alonso district who wanted to attend IB would do so at Robinson.

Here is where I personally disagree with you on two points: 1) you say that “these parents have chosen to send their kids to Robinson High”. We would be more than OK if she were at Alonso. SHE chose to go to Robinson. Do NOT paint all IB parents with a broad brush by inferring that they are pushing their kids to go IB. That may be true in some cases but definitely not all. We support her as any parent would, but there are limits to that support such as transportation. Speaking of which…

2) Transportation: The Robinson administration had to pull some strings to get the Alonso and Leto district kids to go to their school. They won over the School Board, but parents (such as myself) preferred Hillsborough and even stated that the kids would not attend IB if transportation were not improved to Robinson. The School Board relented and gave an Express bus to Robinson from our neighborhood. That bus is crowded every morning, without it about 30-50% of the kids would not be going to Robinson because of the logistics of getting there. She also does extra-curriculars, but transportation after school is a royal pain although we do car-pool. The pick-up is only made bearable by knowing we don’t have to drive them in the A.M.

No we don’t “want it all”, but we want our kids to be given the best shot if THEY want to succeed.