5 Hillsborough schools will close this month. Here is a final look.

Asked to name her favorite subject at Tampa’s Cleveland Elementary School, Jailise Vega said, “Can I name two?”

An A and B student, she enjoys math and reading equally. But she’s nervous about August, when she will transfer to Witter Elementary after Cleveland closes later this month. Jailise, 9, will need to make new friends.

Change is coming to thousands of Hillsborough County children this summer as the school district pushes ahead with a boundary redesign that responds to lopsided enrollment levels caused, in large part, by parents’ use of school choice.

Slightly more than 2,000 students are in under-enrolled schools that will close and be used for other purposes when the school year ends on May 24. Also slated for closure are Kimbell Elementary and Adams, McLane and Monroe middle schools.

Thousands more students will be reassigned to different schools so the district can even out enrollment levels.

“It’s tough,” said Kimberly Jahn, the principal of South Tampa’s Monroe Middle. Even though the district has made it possible for teachers to obtain suitable transfers, she said, “every person on my campus is facing the unknown, and that’s a weight.”

As for the students, she said, “they are not as fazed as the grownups.” Most will resume classes at nearby Madison Middle, or Stewart Middle along the Hillsborough River.

The decision to redraw boundaries and repurpose schools happened a year ago, after a long and painful consultant study. A sixth school, Just Elementary, was struggling so badly to hire teachers and meet student needs that it closed in June of 2023. It is now used as a community center, housing both district staff and outside organizations.

The five that are next to close faced some challenges both similar to and different than those at Just.

A decade ago, the five schools had a combined enrollment of 3,522 students. Current levels show a 41% decrease, with families opting for magnet schools, independently managed charter schools or other options within the choice system. In some neighborhoods, aging populations also decreased the need for schools.

In redrawing boundaries, the district is seeking to reduce inefficiencies caused by under-enrolled and overcrowded schools. In addition to the students at the five schools that are closing, thousands are being redirected from one open school to another.

Karen Perez, the school board chairperson, voted against the closings and contends they will be harmful to families that rely on their neighborhood schools. “When a student goes to assimilate into a new space, it literally puts them behind two years,” said Perez, a clinical social worker.

She said she believes that, in pursuing the plan developed under former Superintendent Addison Davis, district leaders are trying to shore up support for a proposed property tax to enhance teacher pay. The rationale is that the district is earning the right to the tax by demonstrating it can use its resources wisely.

But Perez said she does not believe the savings are worth the disruption to vulnerable families.

She and board member Jessica Vaughn, who also opposed the plan, say they would like to see more public discussion of the closings. In January, Deputy Superintendent Shaylia McRae sent the board a detailed list of steps the district has taken to keep families informed, equip the schools with books and supplies, and help displaced employees find suitable jobs.

Buses must be rerouted. Food orders must be adjusted. Families have been invited to tour other schools, including magnet schools, according to district emails.

The buildings will be emptied out after classes end, said district spokesperson Tanya Arja. As the summer months are used for construction projects at schools that are open, work on the closed schools will begin during the 2024-25 academic year.

It’s too soon to know the impact these changes will have on enrollment, as some families will use school choice to avoid their children’s new schools. At a board workshop recently, Superintendent Van Ayres said the new boundaries should leave the district without any school operating below 60% capacity. But true numbers will not be known until September.

Here is a brief history of the five schools that are soon to close:

Adams Middle

Established in 1958 on Busch Boulevard, the school was named for John Quincy Adams, the nation’s sixth president. Like other middle schools, it served grades seven through nine as a junior high school before the districtwide transition three decades ago to middle schools with grades six through eight.

In its prime, Adams had more than 1,000 students drawn from a diverse area that included the upper-middle-class neighborhoods of Carrollwood and Forest Hills. But in recent years, virtually all families in Original Carrollwood found other alternatives for their children. Carrollwood Elementary School is now being converted to a K-8 school, at the community’s insistence.

Adams has a D grade from the state. At last count it had 533 students, even though 1,367 public middle school students live in its zone. The remaining students will be offered spots at Hill, Memorial and Buchanan middle schools, and at Carrollwood, Sulphur Springs and Woodson K-8 schools.

Cleveland Elementary

Grover Cleveland Elementary, also named for a U.S. president, was built in 1926 to serve Tampa’s growing population during the land boom of the 1920s.

Cleveland had 417 students in 2013. Enrollment shrank in the decade that followed, to 195 this year. Those who left were evenly divided among charter, magnet and choice schools. The 344 students living in the Cleveland zone are being assigned to Foster and Seminole elementary schools, and Sulphur Springs K-8.

Kimbell Elementary

Kimbell opened in 2008 just west of Temple Terrace. It was named for Sylvia Rodriguez Kimbell, an educator and Hillsborough County commissioner.

The school received C grades from the state for its first five years, but those changed to D’s and F’s for much of the last decade. Enrollment dropped to 339 from 553 a decade earlier. Riverhills Elementary, a magnet school, and Woodmont, a charter school, attracted the largest numbers of students leaving Kimbell.

The 597 public school children who live in Kimbell’s zone will be reassigned to Sheehy Elementary and Woodson K-8.

McLane Middle

With a history that dates to 1914, McLane served elementary and middle school grades and was an early home to Brandon High School. It was named for E.F. McLane, a Brandon High principal.

The school has been known for a prize-winning robotics program. But it also experienced periods of unrest resulting from a school boundary plan that bused hundreds of students in from East Tampa. Long daily bus rides and parents’ difficulty in accessing the school contributed to widespread alienation. Expulsion statistics were the highest in the district, the Times reported in 2015. Explosive incidents included a dismissal-time brawl in which a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputy used a taser gun on two female students.

The district later took steps to keep more East Tampa students in their neighborhood by encouraging them to apply to magnet schools there. Behavior at McLane improved, but enrollment never fully rebounded.

The school was about half empty this year, with 652 students. Those zoned for McLane are being offered seats at Giunta, Sligh and Mann middle schools.

Monroe Middle

Named for President James Monroe, the school was opened in 1957 to serve the area surrounding and including MacDill Air Force Base. Over the years, Monroe established a Junior ROTC program — unique for Florida at the time — and, later, a science and technology program.

But enrollment levels were low, with 344 students at last count. A big draw was Tinker, a MacDill-based elementary school that expanded to include the middle school grades in 2015. The district tried to rebrand Monroe under an International Baccalaureate format, but that effort was not successful.

The 573 students zoned for Monroe are being offered seats at Madison and Stewart middle schools.