Wake puts enrollment caps on 25 schools in 2022. See who’s on the list.
Story corrected to list Holly Ridge Elementary as one of the four new schools being placed under an enrollment cap.
Four more Wake County schools are joining the list of overcrowded campuses put under enrollment caps that keep newly arriving families from attending them.
The Wake County school board approved this week putting enrollment caps on 25 crowded schools through the 2022-23 school year. This list includes new caps at Apex, Holly Ridge and Parkside elementary schools in western Wake and River Bend Elementary in northeast Raleigh.
Capping is not popular. But school leaders say the alternatives would be “massive reassignment” or converting schools to a multi-track year-round calendar.
“Nobody likes capping,” said board member Jim Martin. “Staff doesn’t like capping, the board doesn’t like capping, the community doesn’t like capping. But what capping does is it minimizes the need for reassignment.”
List of capped schools
The new enrollment caps at Apex, Holly Ridge, Parkside and River Bend elementary schools go into effect immediately. Their overflow options are:
▪ Baucom and Penny Road elementary schools will serve as overflow options for Apex Elementary depending on where the newly arriving family lives.
▪ Middle Creek Elementary will be the overflow for Holly Ridge Elementary.
▪ Adams Elementary will be the overflow for Parkside Elementary.
▪ Fox Road Elementary would be the overflow for River Bend Elementary.
Caps will continue at 16 elementary schools: Abbotts Creek, Alston Ridge, Beaverdam, Cedar Fork, Highcroft, Holly Grove, Hortons Creek, Mills Park, Northwoods, Oakview, Olive Chapel, Rogers Lane, Scotts Ridge, Sycamore Creek, Weatherstone and White Oak.
Caps also will continue at Apex Friendship and Mills Park middle schools and Apex Friendship, Heritage and Panther Creek high schools.
But caps are being removed at Combs and Lead Mine elementary schools in Raleigh.
Pros and cons of capping
Enrollment caps are a way to shift the burden of reducing school overcrowding onto newcomers.
When a capped school reaches an enrollment limit, families who weren’t living in the attendance area by a certain date are assigned to a more distant school that has space. This school year, 1,627 students are capped out of the school they’d normally attend.
“We can all agree that we don’t want to have enrollment caps,” said Glenn Carrozza, Wake’s assistant superintendent for school choice, planning and assignment. “They’re just a necessary component of our day-to-day work.”
Capping comes with a cost of longer bus rides for students. Wake will need 11 more buses to serve capped schools at a time when there’s a major driver shortage.
Carrozza has warned that a “huge wave” of student assignment changes would be needed if they don’t cap schools or convert them to a multi-track year-round calendar.
Some families like the multi-track calendar, in which students are split into four groups, with three in session at all times, as a way to increase capacity. But some families don’t like it, so the board also approved Tuesday converting four under-enrolled multi-track schools to a single-track year-round calendar.
State class size limits
Wake has to deal with how the state sets class sizes at 18 students in kindergarten, 16 in first grade and 17 students in second- and third-grades.
Republican state lawmakers say smaller K-3 class sizes will help improve academic performance. But Carrozza says it’s cost Wake 9,500 classroom seats.
Most of the capped elementary schools are in fast-growing western and southwestern Wake.
Board member Christine Kushner had asked if Wake could seek K-3 class size waivers from the state to avoid capping schools. But Superintendent Cathy Moore said that the waivers can’t be asked for before the school year has even started.
“I think for parts of this county, parents and families would rather have bigger class sizes and not be capped out and not be reassigned and not convert schools to year-round calendars,” Kushner said. “That would be their choice and we’re not able to give them that choice for these schools, and that’s frustrating.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 7:30 AM.
