District Administrators Look To Relieve Overcrowding At Vandergriff School Next Year
By Rose Ann PearceFAYETTEVILLE -- Enrollment figures for the next school year show Vandergriff Elementary School bursting at the seams with 691 children who live in the attendance zone and plan to go to school there next year.
Administrators are considering short-term options to deal with the overcrowding.
The long-term solution will most likely involve redrawing the attendance boundaries for Vandergriff, which could send some of its students to Asbell or Root elementary schools.
Such a move would most likely set off a chain reaction. Some students from Vandergriff would be moved to Butterfield Trail or Root schools, which in turn will require some students in those schools to be moved to Leverett or Washington schools.
Holcomb Elementary School will have nearly 560 more students next year. New attendance boundaries on the west could send some students from Holcomb to Owl Creek or Asbell and students from Asbell to Leverett or Washington.
Attendance numbers for the 2007-08 school year were presented to the Fayetteville School Board on Thursday. Vandergriff's capacity is listed at 672.
Enrollments projected at each elementary school range from a high of 691 at Vandergriff to 244 students at Leverett.
"We made a mistake," Tim Kring said Friday, referring to the board's review of proposed attendance boundaries developed by a citizens committee for the current school year. Those boundaries were enacted more than a year ago and took effect last August.
The committee presented two sets of boundary proposals -- one for eight elementary schools, omitting Leverett Elementary School, and the other for nine elementary schools, including Leverett.
The discussion became more focused on the proposed closing of Leverett Elementary School instead of looking critically at all the zones, particularly Vandergriff which was predicted to be over capacity by the 2007-08 school year, Kring said.
The district needs to adjust the attendance zones in time for the 2008-09 school year, Kring said. Kring said the district also needs to develop a plan to fill all the schools to capacity before considering building any new schools.
Superintendent Bobby New said Friday he may have a rezoning proposal ready for the school board to review by its June meeting.
Rezoning attendance boundaries for Vandergriff and other schools offers the best way to have effectiveness in the classroom and operational efficiency, New said.
"We don't have equal distribution of students," New said.
A split classroom with students in two grades, such as first and second or second and third, is one alternative for alleviating overcrowded classrooms and meeting the state classroom size requirements.
Portable classrooms are "a last-ditch effort," New said, noting safety concerns and isolation of children.
Wiseman said some special classrooms may be converted to regular classrooms. As an example, she said, art may become a cart-based program with the teacher traveling from room to room.
Additional staff may have to be hired at Vanderbilt, but, Wiseman added, additional teachers probably won't be hired to accommodate transfer requests into Washington. Wiseman said the requests to transfer into Leverett can probably be handled within the current staffing level at the school.
Some 47 students have requested transfers to attend Washington, Leverett and Happy Hollow elementary schools next year.
Of the total requests, 27 want to transfer to Washington; 19, to Leverett; and one to Happy Hollow.
The school board decided in February to allow in-district transfers to Washington and Leverett schools to boost enrollment in those two buildings, if classroom space is available.
The two schools have the lowest enrollment among the district's nine elementary schools.
BY THE NUMBERS
Fayetteville Enrollment
Enrollment for next school year at elementary schools in Fayetteville currently stands at:
Vandergriff -- 691
Holcomb -- 564
Root -- 483
Butterfield Trail -- 433
Asbell -- 427
Owl Creek -- 422
Happy Hollow -- 360
Washington -- 275
Leverett -- 244
Source: Fayetteville School District