On Friday, October 23, nearly 250 first graders from three Tampa elementary schools will walk into The Florida Aquarium on a field trip that cost their schools and their families nothing. That is the part that makes it news. The trip is the opening of a county-wide program paid for out of a property tax increase that Hillsborough County voters approved in 2024.
The schools are Bryan Plant City, Mabry and Tampa Bay Boulevard. The program is the PreK-8 Millage Partnership Field Trip program, and its scope is the striking thing: every Hillsborough County Public Schools student from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade is to get a curriculum-connected field trip, at no cost to the school or the household. The aquarium alone expects to see close to 13,000 first graders this school year.
What is a millage referendum?
Millage is the rate at which property is taxed, expressed in mills, or dollars per thousand dollars of assessed value. A millage referendum is therefore a ballot question asking homeowners to raise their own property tax for a stated purpose. Hillsborough County voters passed one in 2024, and this is one of the things they bought.
Worth being plain about the mechanism, because it is the whole story. These are not donated tickets and not a grant. A county electorate voted to tax itself, and the resulting money now moves children through an aquarium, a zoo, a science center, two museums, a working courthouse and more besides, during school hours, on a bus the school did not have to pay for.
Who else is on the list
The Florida Aquarium is one of several partners. Across grade levels, students will also visit the Glazer Children’s Museum, ZooTampa, the Tampa Museum of Art, MOSI, Muma BizTown, Nature’s Classroom and the Tampa Courthouse.
That roster is a reasonable sketch of what a city thinks a child should see. Two of the eight are zoological facilities, which is a larger share of civic attention than zoos and aquariums usually get in a conversation about public education funding, and it arrives in the same county where ZooTampa is working through a $75 million master plan backed by county infrastructure money.
What the first graders will do
The curriculum connection is specific rather than decorative. The students work through Florida’s ecosystems from wetlands to coral reef, with the lesson built around how animals adapt to living on land and in fresh, brackish and salt water. The aquarium says the trip is designed to reinforce what the students are already covering in class rather than to run alongside it. They also get their hands wet: sea stars, anemones, jellyfish and stingrays at The Tide Pool and Stingray Beach.
They leave with vocabulary words and riddles to take home, which is the quiet tell that somebody designed this to survive the bus ride. The aquarium’s senior director of learning, Tristin Ware, and Jessica Kepa, an elementary generalist supervisor for the school district, are hosting.
Nobody aggregates this kind of story, and it is the answer to the question a skeptical reader is actually asking, which is what a zoo or an aquarium is for besides the animals. On October 23 the answer is 250 six-year-olds who would not otherwise have been there.
Quick answers
- What is the PreK-8 Millage Partnership Field Trip program?
A Hillsborough County Public Schools program giving every student from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade a curriculum-connected field trip at no cost to the school or the family. It is paid for out of the millage referendum county voters approved in 2024.
- What is a millage referendum?
Millage is the property tax rate, expressed in mills, meaning dollars per thousand dollars of assessed value. A millage referendum is a ballot question asking property owners to raise that rate for a stated purpose.
- How many students will The Florida Aquarium see?
The aquarium expects close to 13,000 first graders across the school year. The first trip, on October 23, 2026, brings nearly 250 students from Bryan Plant City, Mabry and Tampa Bay Boulevard elementary schools.
- Which other places are on the program?
Across grade levels, students will also visit the Glazer Children’s Museum, ZooTampa, the Tampa Museum of Art, MOSI, Muma BizTown, Nature’s Classroom and the Tampa Courthouse.
- What do the first graders actually do at the aquarium?
They work through Florida ecosystems from wetlands to coral reef, built around how animals adapt to life on land and in fresh, brackish and salt water, and they handle animals at The Tide Pool and Stingray Beach. They take home vocabulary words and riddles from the visit.
