Weeks after the Hillsborough County School Board voted to close Pizzo K-8 in 2027 due to increasing costs, teachers and community members have continued pushing back to find alternate solutions.
This week, members of Project Pizzo, a group launched to try to save the school in some capacity, met with leaders at the University of South Florida, which has leased the building to the school district since the late 1990s.
While district leaders have pointed to USF’s 2024 decision to increase the lease almost tenfold to an amount totaling $8 million over 10 years, USF officials have said it was the district’s decision after years of back-and-forth to end a lease that was more up to date with the market rate, and to demolish the almost 30-year old building, which had many maintenance needs.
While the meeting took place at the USF Patel Center, teachers and community members blew bubbles and waved balloons outside.
Liz Valdez, a second grade teacher, said she hoped even if the same property wasn’t renegotiated, some solution could be found to keep the school community together.
“This community definitely needs a lot of socioeconomic (and) health assistance, which our school provides,” she said. “Forcing us out causes a great deal of financial instability.”
Valdez said she’s seen teachers help parents in the car line with gas money, and her church has held drives for clothing and school supplies.
A retired priest at her church, Michael DeArruda, joined the group at the USF campus.
“These are two publicly funded institutions whose state charters require them to be in partnership on behalf of the greater public good,” he said. “Right now, at least one of those two entities is behaving like a big, powerful corporation, and I don’t understand how they can adopt that posture and get away with it.”
DeArruda said he hopes the two institutions can work together on some kind of solution.
“Public land, public money, public interest: there should be cohesive public good that is achieved by all of these parties,” he said. “The sad commentary throughout the country is that public education is failing, and it’s instances like this where it’s a no-brainer. People can step up and choose to do the right thing.”
The sentiment was shared by Anthony J. Pizzo, the son of Tony Pizzo, the namesake of the school and a Hillsborough County historian.
Pizzo and his brother Paul Pizzo attended the meeting with USF officials.
“We’re concerned,” Anthony J. Pizzo said. “It should be a conversation about education and the good of the community, about the Pizzo K-8 community, that is the students primarily, but of course, the staff and administration. But they’re not being included in the conversation.”
He said he worried it had “become more about financial considerations, and in other words, a transactional thing, rather than about education.”
He called it an “economic eviction” and said his family holds an endowment in his name to promote history research.
“This is not random,” he said. “This is a very personal connection between him and the school.”
A spokesperson for USF said the meeting was held at the request of Pizzo teachers.
“As was shared during the meeting, the decision to close Pizzo Elementary is made by the Hillsborough County School Board, not USF,” spokesperson Althea Johnson said in an email. “The school board signed a new ten-year sublease with USF in 2024, and the school board decided in 2026 to terminate the sublease.”
School board member Jessica Vaughn, who voted against closing the school and the plan to redistribute students in the way suggested by district staff, also attended the meeting, representing only herself, she said.
“I think having a conversation was really good, but it’s hard to say,” she said. “I didn’t walk away with anything that made me feel like they were anxious to revisit the agreement.”
Vaughn said she was open to revisiting alternate solutions to moving students from Pizzo, but didn’t receive immediate support to hold a board workshop to do so.
At Tuesday’s school board meeting, Pizzo community members continued to plead with the board.
Teacher Anita Bloom told board members how a charter school with plans to open a K-8 in the area was already handing out fliers in the school’s carline. Teacher Angela Colonello pointed to the $77 million willing to be spent to open a new campus at Just and Stewart Elementary. She asked if teachers could go to Tallahassee to plea their case.
“Can you invite us, and can we all go together?” she asked. “I just really want to make sure that we’re working together, and that we’re working as an entity, and we are asking the right people for money, making sure that we are asking up for money and not along the sides.”
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