RALEIGH -- Wake County school administrators said today they’re working on a comprehensive plan to deal with crowding for the 2012-13 school year that could change what grades are taught at some schools and whether they’ll offer magnet programs.
With more than 50 Wake schools projected to be either severely overcrowded or sharply under-enrolled in a few years, administrators said a comprehensive plan is needed to make sure that space is used efficiently in the growing school district.
Laura Evans, Wake’s senior director of growth and planning, said the plan that’s being developed could result in recommendations to drop magnet programs at some schools and to add them at others. She said it could also result in changes in grade configurations at schools with, for instance, some schools offering kindergarten through eighth-grade
instead of the traditional elementary and middle school configurations now in use.
“We want to look at it all as one big package for the 2012-13 school year,” Evans said.
Evans said the additional time will also allow them to more comprehensively adopt the new student assignment policy adopted earlier this year that stresses proximity while no longer considering the use of socioeconomic diversity.
Don Haydon, chief facilities and operations officer, said it won’t be possible to have a comprehensive plan ready for the 2011-12 school year. He said they don’t have the time left to get more mobile classrooms relocated and in place for the upcoming school year.
Even though the recession has slowed growth from the record levels in the mid-2000s, Wake is still seeing growth of around 3,000 students a year. It’s projected that Wake could see as many as 60,000 more students by 2020 as the economy improves.
Staff is projecting that 34 schools will be more than 20 percent above their ideal capacity in 2013-14. At the same time, they’re also projecting that 18 schools will be at least 25 percent below their ideal capacity in 2013-14.
But in the face of this growth, Wake doesn’t have money now for all the new schools that would need to be built. The school district is finishing up work funded by a $970 million school construction bond issue approved by voters in 2006.
No date or amount has been set yet for the next bond issue.
As part of a comprehensive plan to deal with the growth starting with the 2012-13 school year, the magnet department is being asked to a review of all schools. The review, which will include a funding analysis, will recommend which schools to magnetize or demagnetize.
As part of the review of grade configurations, staff will also look at ideas such as offering only kindergarten through second grade or third through fifth grades at some schools.
Other ideas that could be reviewed include creating sixth-grade centers, ninth-grade centers and K-8 schools.
Staff will also evaluate the use of temporary classrooms and other alternatives for dealing with crowding.
In the meantime, staff said they’re recommending not making conmprehensive changes to the 2011-12 school year. Instead, they’re going forward with the plan they presented last month calling for the reassignment of more than 3,200 students for this fall. The school board has added hundreds of students to the plan for possible consideration.
The school board would need to develop a plan for 2012-13 anyway because the current multi-year plan adopted by the old board expires after the 2011-12 school year.
