Apollo Beach Elementary was built in 1982. It is one of 146 elementary schools in Hillsborough County – the 8th largest school district in the United States. The school is located in small urban (town) setting south of Tampa. Although the school does not have much ethnic diversity, it does have a disparity in the SES among students. This presents challenges in terms of unifying students & parents to create a caring school climate. Therefore, we embarked upon a character initiative in 2002 with only 4 trained faculty members. Since that time, our program has grown to include the entire faculty staff, students, parents and community at large. Over 50% of the faculty serve on the character education committee and many of these members have been individually trained in various components of character they frequently share with others. ABES has been the recipient of 3 CEP Promising Practice Awards. In recent years, time has become an obstacle as county demands on instructional time has increased, thereby limiting extra activities involving character development. As a result, we have worked diligently to embed character education into every setting (academic & otherwise) to maximize efforts that reinforce character building among our youth and staff. We have taken new steps to actively involve parents, PTA & business partners to make a community connection.

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