School District Approves Land O' Lakes Park, Sanders Deal

Plans for the redevelopment of Sanders Elementary School were set in motion in December 2008. Nearly four years later, those plans have moved another step closer to fruition.

The Pasco County School board approved an interlocal agreement with the county for the redesign and joint use of the school and the Land O’ Lakes Community Park at its Dec. 4 board meeting.

The deal allows the park and the school shared parking on the school’s property, shared use of the school’s basketball courts and softball field as well as the county’s soccer fields, walking trails and shelter. The district and the county will also share stormwater management.

“When you pull something like this off with the county it is a great feat,” board member Howard Altman said. “This has been a tremendous process and something we should be proud of.”

It took several years to fine tune, the results of which he hopes will become a model for the construction of future schools, Altman said.

It is to the benefit of taxpayers that the district and the county share these funds, Altman said.

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“Full consideration has been made to ensure the safety and security of the students during the appropriate hours of use, as well as the facilities during after-hours campus occupancy,” according to a memo submitted to the board asking for its approval of the agreement.

“We’ve been working on this partnership for a long, long time,” Pasco County Parks and Recreation Director Rick Buckman said.

This will be the first time we actually redesign things so that we can co-locate infrastructure and share programming, Buckman said.

"From the county’s point of view… I really appreciate this,” Buckman said. “But more importantly, I raised a family here and I have two kids in the school system and this really needed to be done a long time ago.”

See also:

Sanders Memorial Elementary School: 62 Years of Education in Pasco

The full agreement between the county and the school district is attached to this story.