Amid the crackdown on street art, street murals outside several Hillsborough County schools installed for safety purposes will also be removed.
Among the schools with brightly colored crosswalks idetified by the state’s transportation department as non-compliant: Rampello and Dr. Carter G Woodson K-8 schools; Roosevelt, Edison, Broward, Shaw, McFarlane Park, Forest Hills, Mabry, Grady, Potter and Just elementary schools; Monroe Middle School; and Robinson and Plant high schools.
All except for Plant High School’s mural were part of Mayor Jane Castor’s Crosswalks for Classrooms project, which began in 2019 and received a statewide innovation award from the Department of Transportation in 2020. The project commissioned artist Jay Giroux to paint lively crosswalks, some of which featured books, to create bright focal points for drivers and pedestrians.
The projects were sponsored by a variety of groups, including Walk Bike Tampa Bay, Sidewalk Stompers, Jacobs Engineering and Atkins Global.
Plant’s Street Mural Safety project commissioned artist Alex Flores and was installed by students.
At a news conference Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis dismissed concerns over students who might be upset to see their work disappear.
“Anything that was previously permitted or installed or awarded, anything you can bring up from the past essentially is irrelevant now, because we have a new law and we have a new standard,” he said “We’re simply implementing that standard, and it’s across the board. Pavement art is not allowed.”
State officials have begun painting over street art across the state, including a rainbow crosswalk commemorating the Pulse nightclub victims in Orlando and a checkered flag crosswalk in Daytona. Tampa’s “Back the Blue” mural and a two-headed alligator mural in Seminole Heights are also among 47 locations to be removed.
DeSantis said the groups behind the murals were not “doing anything wrong, per se,” but that the trend had difficult to manage.
“It got way out of control to where safety and the use of the roads was almost secondary to people being able to appropriate that for different types of messaging,” he said.
At Rampello K-8, where the first Crosswalk to Classrooms was installed featuring book spines with titles like “The Outsiders” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” crossing guard Brendalyn Culver said she didn’t follow the state’s logic that the painted crosswalks caused distractions for drivers.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t see why it should be a problem.”
Mindy Vaughn, a parent at Rampello, said she was split on the issue. She said she understood that “roadways aren’t the spot for political messages,” but thought street art like ones supporting school values or commemorating victims of the Pulse shooting shouldn’t all be lumped together.
“I feel like some of them should be left up, especially the ones with meaning,” she said.
Times staff writer Shauna Muckle contributed to this report.
Divya Kumar is a reporter covering education as a member of the Tampa Bay Times Education Hub. You can contribute to the hub through our journalism fund byclicking here.
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