Information

Established：1969

Principal：Steven Largo

Enrollment：2202 (2011-2012 year)

colors：Blue, Gold

Mascot：Python

Website：www.sarasota.k12.fl.us/pvs

Pine View School for the Gifted is a public, college-preparatory, coeducational, school located in Osprey, Florida. Pine View serves students in second through twelfth grades.

Origin

The school was founded in 1969 under the direction of John D. Woolever, an educator who had written numerous scholarly articles on education throughout his career. During the school's early history, many feared the possibility of it being shut down, especially when the school moved to its current campus in 1992. Today, the school is well known for its extra-curricular activities and competitive academic teams, specifically the Speech and Debate Team, the Academic Olympics team, and the numerous language competition teams, including French (Congrès), Chinese (Chinese Competition), and Spanish (Conferencia) and many more. Pine View School's musical education department has also been recognized for outstanding performances at local and state levels, with the Pine View Jazz Band ranking "underpar" at all state competitions in 2011. With only about 169 students per graduating class, Pine View over the years has still sent 60 alumni to attend Ivy League schools. There are hundreds more at other top universities around the nation.

Publications

Pine View School comes out with three newspapers: The Torch (grades 7-12), The Match (grades 2-6), and their online publications, PineViewTorch.com and PineViewMatch.com, both featuring articles not put in the paper and articles from the most recent issue.. It also comes out with two yearbooks: The View, the high school yearbook, and The mView, the middle school yearbook. The yearbooks have been ranked in the top 5 in Florida competitions and ranked highly in national competitions.

Sports

Pine View has middle school sports teams for basketball, track and field, and volleyball. Pine View's mascot is the python. In the 2008-2009 school year, the tennis team went undefeated and won the Sarasota County Championship, and in 2009-2010 both the men's and women's basketball teams went undefeated and won the county final. In the 2009-2010 school year, the Pine View women's tennis team went undefeated in the regular season, but lost the county Championship to Sarasota Middle School.
 

Pine View used to not participate in high school athletics. However, in the 2010-2011 school year, Pine View started their first official high school sport- lacrosse. It is not certain whether this lacrosse team will lead to more sports for Pine View. For the other sports, Pine View students are permitted to participate in athletics at other district high schools. Many students choose non-school (or "varsity") based sports, such as rowing - a club based sport in the cities of Sarasota and Venice. The award winning Speech and Debate team is the unofficial sports team of Pine View.

The Pine View lacrosse program, however, despite its labeling as 'official', is not a Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) recognized varsity team. It is instead a club team of the Gulf Coast Lacrosse Chapter of US Lacrosse. The main reason behind the club not being recognized by the FHSAA as a varsity team is because Pine View never registered it, for the purpose of cost-cutting. According to the FHSAA by-laws, if a school has even one FHSAA recognized varsity program, no student attending that school could play for any other sport for any other school. Since Pine View would prefer to allow the students to have the freedom to choose to play any sport, on top of the fact that the school doesn't have the funding necessary to jump start every program, they choose not to make the club team FHSAA-recognized and instead take the county option to allow the students to play for their districted school.

Awards and recognition

During the 2003-04 school year, Pine View School was recognized with the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence by the United States Department of Education the highest award an American school can receive. In 2007, the school was rated 6th best high school in the nation, 11th best in 2008, and 14th best in 2009 by U.S. News. In 2009, they were also rated America's Best High School for Florida by Business Week. The Pine View Middle School Golf Team won the County Championship in the fall of 2009.

The student body is also an extremely recognized group of individuals. Many participate in extracurricular activities, such as the Speech and Debate Team, that have received both state and national recognition.

Entrance requirements

In order to be considered for admission into Pine View, prospective students must meet the following requirements:
 

Proof of Sarasota County residence

Teacher recommendation accompanying the application

Minimum score of 130 on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children or full-scale score of 830 on the Stanford-Binet V

Minimum points on the Gifted Profile exam
 

Curriculum

Pine View's academic year is 180 days long and is divided into two semesters. Students must enroll in at least six classes, not counting study halls, during each semester. Because most of Pine View's students enter high school with credit from high school classes taken during middle school, Pine View requires students to complete 26 credits in order to graduate from high school; the state of Florida requires only 24 credits.
 

Pine View's credit distribution requirements are these:

English - 4 credits

Math - 3 credits

Science - 3 credits

Social Studies - 3 credits, with one credit in American History, half a credit in Economics, and half a credit in Government

Practical Arts, Performing Fine Arts - 1 credit

Life Management Skills, Physical Education - 1.5 credits

Foreign Language - 3 credits

Many students graduate with significantly more than the required 26 credits; graduating with 33 credits is not unheard of. Students acquire these extra credits by taking more than the required six classes per semester, carrying over credit from high school-level language and math classes taken during middle school, taking classes online at the Florida Virtual School, and taking classes (most often Personal Fitness and Fitness Lifestyle Design) during the summer.

Pine View's curriculum emphasizes rigor, and students who have attended other public schools in the Sarasota area generally report that Pine View's classes require significantly more work than their counterparts at other schools. Although weighted GPAs give the standard half-point bonus to honors classes, the same class is never offered as both non-honors and honors at Pine View. Most classes are designated as honors to reflect their challenging workload except where Florida statute prohibits the designation, such as in foreign language classes. Pine View alumni report not having known about this distinction until well after graduation.

Since students are never given a choice between honors and non-honors classes, they instead choose between Advanced Placement (AP) and non-AP classes. As of the 2006-2007 school year, Pine View officially offers approximately 28 different AP courses, although a course may not be taught in a given year due to lack of student demand.

Academic recognition

Pine View is among Florida's 35 public schools (1.2%) to earn a top grade of "A" on every administration of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) since the program began in 1999.

Pine View has one of the highest percentages in the nation of its middle and high school students receiving the Presidential Academic Achievement Award. This is awarded to students who maintain an A average, or a GPA of 3.5.

Pine View School has one of the highest Florida Bright Future Scholarship acceptance rates amongst its graduating class. Also, it is one of the few public schools in Florida to receive the distinguished Great Schools rating of 10 out of 10. The school also has a very high parent rating, of 4/5 stars average from multiple school rating websites.