Pasco Plans a Medical Magnet High School in Wesley Chapel to Open by 2028

Pasco County is moving ahead with plans for a new medical magnet high school in Wesley Chapel — a roughly $80 million campus designed to open by August 2028, train students for health care careers and pull hundreds of students out of two of the area’s most overcrowded schools.

The Pasco County school district intends to build a health care–focused magnet high school on a nearly 75-acre, district-owned site off Meadow Pointe Boulevard, with an opening targeted for the 2028–29 school year. According to information presented to the Pasco County School Board, the campus would open with room for about 1,300 students and center its coursework on fields such as medical sciences, imaging and nursing.

For families across Wesley Chapel, the project takes aim at a problem they already feel every morning in the car line: schools here are filling faster than the district can build them. Rapid housing growth has pushed Wesley Chapel High and Wiregrass Ranch High well beyond their intended capacities, and district planners say thousands more students could arrive as new neighborhoods continue to open.

Two campuses already stretched past capacity

Enrollment counts reported for the fall semester underscore the squeeze. District figures showed Wiregrass Ranch High operating at roughly 143 percent of capacity and Wesley Chapel High at about 134 percent, making them the two most crowded high schools in Pasco County. District officials have described Wesley Chapel High as several hundred students over capacity and Wiregrass Ranch as even more packed, with the two campuses’ combined overflow topping 1,000 students.

The crowding is not new. Cypress Creek High opened in 2017 to relieve pressure on nearby campuses, yet east Pasco’s growth has rolled on, and that school now sits near its own capacity. Projections cited during board discussions suggest more than 4,000 additional students could eventually fall within the area’s high school boundaries as planned housing is built out.

Percent-of-capacity figures reflect district enrollment counts reported for the fall semester and may shift as new students enroll.

The pressure has been heavy enough that district leaders moved the project up by roughly two years from its original timeline. The high school would sit on district-owned land near the Country Walk community and, according to the district’s planning staff, has advanced alongside a separate K–8 campus planned for the nearby Two Rivers development. Both projects are aimed at a fall 2028 opening.

A high school built around health care

Rather than drawing strictly from an attendance zone, the new school is planned as a magnet program, meaning it would enroll students from across the district who choose its health care focus. Its location is central to that mission. The site sits near several major medical facilities, including AdventHealth Wesley Chapel and BayCare Hospital Wesley Chapel, as well as the Florida Medical Clinic Orlando Health Wiregrass Ranch Hospital now in the works nearby.

District leaders have framed the health care theme as a direct response to local demand for trained workers in the field.

The concept has been building for more than a year. In 2025, Pasco County Schools secured a $500,000 planning grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, in partnership with AdventHealth, to design a health care–focused high school program. District officials have said that planning grant could open the door to a far larger implementation grant down the road, though that funding has not been secured.

The district is also leaning on its relationship with Pasco-Hernando State College, whose nursing and allied health programs could give graduates a direct path into post-secondary training. PHSC President Eric Hall has voiced support for the school, describing it as a way to create a seamless pipeline for students interested in health care careers and tying it to the college’s nursing and allied health institute at its Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch.

The estimated $80 million cost is being covered primarily through impact fees — the one-time charges collected from new residential construction to help pay for the roads, utilities and public buildings that growth demands. In a community where rooftops have multiplied for two decades, that funding model ties the school directly to the same development pressure it is meant to relieve.

Wesley Chapel Community will continue following the project as the district releases more details. For more local news and updates, visit wesleychapelcommunity.com and follow Wesley Chapel Community on Facebook, X and Instagram.