Crisis was years in the making

A judge's decision against the Wake County school system's use of mandatory year-round schools caught many by surprise Thursday, but the conditions that led to it have been building openly for more than a decade.

Wake schools turned to mandatory year-round schools to relieve pressure in a system filling with thousands of new students and constrained by a reluctance to pay for enough traditional-calendar schools.

Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr.'s ruling has eliminated the mandatory year-round option and put the state's second-largest school system into a quandary about placing students. Here's a look at five developments that put the school system in this position.

No. 1: Growth

Growth has been the story of the decade for Wake County, but school and county leaders didn't realize it would be so fast.

The county grows by an average of 98 residents a day, up 50 percent from just four years ago. Wake schools have gained more than 30,000 students in the past six years -- almost the equivalent of the entire Durham school system.

The rate of growth is expected to speed up, with 40,664 more students expected in the next five years.

School and county leaders had some warnings. A district analyst projected in 1992 that Wake would have 118,000 students by 2005. Her projection was met with skepticism, and her job was eliminated a year later. Later projections failed to accurately forecast the recent growth.

County and municipal leaders have been reluctant to slow the growth, which brings jobs and tax revenue to their budgets.

School board members say they cannot control growth. The district can't approve projects or require developers to provide land for schools.

Beverley Clark, the sharpest critic of growth on the school board, plans to introduce a resolution Tuesday urging county and municipal planners to slow the rate of growth.

The resolution didn't impress Tony Gurley, chairman of the county board of commissioners. "The county should encourage good growth, and that's what we've been doing," he said.

No. 2: Fear of tax hikes

Even as growth has taken off, money to build new schools has not kept pace.

That lag in construction money can be traced to the defeat of a $650 million school construction bond issue in 1999. Bond opponents successfully focused on an anti-tax hike message. School leaders have admitted they were overconfident it would pass based on past success.

Despite the public's vote, commissioners raised property taxes to help pay for the next two bond issues. But the vote ultimately led to Democrats losing control of the board of commissioners.

Fearing another bond election defeat, the next two school bond issues in 2000 and 2003 were limited to amounts that wouldn't require a tax increase. For instance, the $867 million requested by the school system in 2003 was cut to $550 million, largely funded by a $450 million bond issue.

The school board can request a bond referendum, but it's up to commissioners to put it on the ballot.

"[Commissioners] had a predetermined number no matter how many schools were needed," said Bill Fletcher, a school board member from 1993 to 2005.

No. 3: Locked into year-round schools

It wasn't until November that school board members and county commissioners could agree on asking voters to approve a bond issue that would result in a tax increase.

But a lingering concern that a too-large tax increase would scare off voters kept the bond issue to $970 million. It locked the district into going forward with a greater use of mandatory year-round schools. Year-round schools can hold more students than traditional schools, reducing the number of new schools needed.