Looking Beyond the Typical Solutions to Provide Classroom Seats
April 2006--Wake County has become the fastest growing county in North Carolina, adding 22,000 people annually. The state demographer estimates that by 2015, the population will hit nearly 982,000 people, making Wake the state’s largest county. Why are people moving here? Some of the draws include Wake’s close proximity to Research Triangle Park, three major universities, the beach and mountains; a fairly low unemployment rate; a lower cost of living compared to many other parts of the country; and a good climate. Another big draw is the Wake County Public School System. WCPSS has 61 Schools of Excellence and 43 Schools of Distinction (N.C. academic designations), the second highest number of National Board Certified Teachers in the United States, and Wake students outperform the nation on the SAT by 47 points.
As the county continues to grow, so does the school system's student population. WCPSS is the 23rd largest district in the nation, and is expected to gain 7,000 new students next year, bringing total enrollment to more than 127,000. Wake has set a new record for growth each of the last three years, adding more than 16,000 students to the system since 2002. In fact, the district's enrollment has doubled since 1985, with estimates showing Wake gaining 40,000 students in the next five years and 72,000 by 2015. This acute growth – on top of existing overcrowding, rising construction costs, and legislative mandates to reduce class size at the elementary level – means that Wake County schools are short 15,000 classroom seats today, and will need 58,000 seats by 2010 and 91,000 seats by 2015.
"When you're adding 7,000 students, you need to build one high school, two middle schools and three elementary schools a year just to keep up," said Christina Lighthall, senior director of long-range planning.
WCPSS has built schools as quickly as funds were made available and land could be acquired. WCPSS has opened 22 new schools since the year 2000, for a total of 138 campuses. Nine new schools are slated to open in the fall (including two comprehensive high schools and two small pilot programs that are part of the high school redesign/small school concept), and three more will open the following year. The Wake County community has approved six bond referenda for school construction since 1985, and staff are refining the specifics of the next capital program for a November 2006 referendum.
The school system's efforts to provide space for a growing student population have resulted in a substantial increase in mobile and modular classrooms. WCPSS already has more than 1,000 temporary classrooms (with another 100 coming soon). Today, 17 percent of students systemwide and 24 percent of elementary students are in temporary classrooms. Mobile and modular classrooms provide a good learning environment. However, the overwhelming number of units overtaxes a campus’ core spaces, such as the media center, cafeteria and bathrooms. WCPSS' goal is to have eight percent of students in mobile or modular classrooms by 2012.
With the acute growth showing no signs of slowing any time soon – as well as increasing land and construction costs – Wake school administrators are looking beyond the typical solutions of just building new schools and adding mobile/modular classrooms.
Modular "early start" campuses
WCPSS opened three modular schools this year – a first for Wake County – allowing the district to open schools one and two years early while the permanent facilities were being constructed. The modular schools are factory-built, and each school has a multi-purpose room, cafeteria, media center, office space and small play areas in addition to four eight-classroom modular complexes. A modular complex consists of eight (or six) classrooms, divided by a hallway, along with bathrooms all under one roof.
"Harris Creek Elementary at Spring Forest Road," for example, opened as a temporary modular school this year on a site adjacent to an existing middle school campus on Spring Forest Road in
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| Harris Creek Elementary at Spring Forest Road |
Raleigh. Next year, the students and staff will move to their permanent site together, and another elementary school will use the temporary space as an early start school while its permanent location is constructed.
WCPSS offers the same comprehensive program no matter what school students attend.
Ninth-grade centers
An option for providing high school classroom seats is the ninth-grade center. Carpenter Elementary, a new school, has served as a ninth-grade center for nearby Green Hope High School since 2004. It was constructed as an elementary school, but high school seats were needed more, so it was temporarily converted to a ninth-grade center. Next year, it will be transformed back to an elementary school and will open with its own students. East Cary Middle School, an existing campus, has served as a ninth-grade center for Cary High School students since 2004 as well, and will become a year-round middle school in 2007. These two ninth-grade centers have helped relieve crowding until two new high schools could be built in their area.
WCPSS staff have also proposed opening six ninth-grade centers in 2006 through 2008.
Adaptive re-use
Adaptive re-use allows the district to take advantage of available resources and save time. In February 2006, the Wake County Board of Education purchased the former Bespak Industrial Building (approximately 92,000 square feet) and 15 acres for a new elementary school to open in 2008 in Cary. The school board paid approximately $5 million for the building and land, and staff expects the retrofit to cost $16 million.
In February the school board also entered a 10-year lease agreement to utilize a former Winn Dixie grocery store and its adjacent parking lots as a ninth-grade center for Wakefield High School. WCPSS will retrofit the 52,000-plus square foot building in time for a 2007-08 opening. The Board of Education will pay approximately $4.7 million over 10 years for the lease and approximately $7.5 million to retrofit the Winn Dixie as a school.
WCPSS has taken advantage of adaptive re-use before. In 1997, the school system purchased the former office and manufacturing facility from American Sterilizer Company and renovated it for the
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| Lufkin Road Middle School |
current Lufkin Road Middle School in Apex. The original facility was built in two parts: a 60,000-square foot high bay and an 84,000-square foot two-story office and laboratory addition. In order to meet a very aggressive schedule, the design, approval and bidding process (which typically requires 12 months) was compressed into three months, and the construction time was reduced from a typical 18 months for a new middle school to six months.
Year-round calendar
Since the late 1980s, WCPSS has opened 15 voluntary year-round schools as a way to provide more classroom seats. Three new schools opened on the year-round calendar last year and all five new elementary schools opening for 2006-07 will be on the multi-track year-round calendar with an assigned base population. Schools on the year-round calendar can house approximately 25 percent more students than schools on a traditional schedule because three of four groups of students are in session and one group is on break at any given time. The year-round schedule is called a 45-15: 45 days in school, 15 days off.
In planning for a November 2006 school construction bond referendum, the Wake County Board of Education and the Wake Board of County Commissioners have been studying various combinations of new construction, renovation of older schools and increasing capacity at existing schools by designating them as year-round. Although converting schools to the year-round calendar alone won’t solve Wake’s crowding problems, the more schools the school board designates as year-round, the fewer new schools the system will need to build. And, that equates to a lower bond cost and a lower property tax increase.
Public-private partnerships
The Wake County Board of Education has set additional funding for school construction and alternative funding options, such as public-private partnerships, as priorities on its 2006-07 Legislative Agenda.
At this point, current N.C. legislation prevents school districts from entering into a capital lease with the option to purchase, nor are districts able to set the parameters for a building to lease. For example, WCPSS would not be able to say where a school is needed or how many classrooms it should have. (School districts are allowed to lease a building and renovate or repair it.) However, the school board is looking at public-private partnerships as a possible way to save time constructing schools in the future, if state legislation could be changed to permit it.
Reassignment
As long as there is growth, there will be a need to build new schools. And, when schools are built, they will need to be filled. Growth = New Schools = Reassignment.
After seven months of discussion with the community on filling the seven new schools opening for 2006-07, the Board of Education approved a growth management plan at its meeting March, 23, 2006. (The two other high schools opening next year are part of the high school redesign/small school concept and do not add substantial capacity.) The plan responds to dramatic growth, with student enrollment increasing by more than 6,400 students this year and estimates projecting an increase of 7,000 students for next year. The proposed plan includes 9,307 students and caps enrollment at two elementary schools.
The board's actions followed lengthy community discussion that included two board work sessions and seven public hearings that drew more than 500 speakers, a public comment period on a draft proposal that resulted in more than 2,000 comments, and a series of 12 community engagement meetings held across the county last fall.
Planning for the Future
In fall 2004, WCPSS contracted with N.C. State University's Operations Research and Education Laboratory to create an analytical, data-driven process that incorporates land use and future developments into determining the best locations for new schools. This will be a continuous long-range school and community planning process involving WCPSS, Wake County government, the 12 municipalities, and the Capital Area Municipal Planning Organization, with the Lab coordinating updates. The new method improves upon the current system by incorporating municipal planning data and projections into school and infrastructure planning, adding GIS technology and operations research methodologies, and projecting school sites beyond a three- or four-year bond cycle.
In spring 2006, the Lab will provide enrollment projections, broken down into approximately 37 geographic planning regions across the county, through 2010; these projections will reflect the municipalities’ data on land use plans and future developments. The Lab is also working with WCPSS to construct an optimization model to generate target areas for school site land banking. By June 2006, the Lab will provide target areas, or circles, for new school locations, as well as student population growth by geographic planning regions, through 2025.
"When it comes to planning, it has to be a community effort," said Lighthall. "When you approve a 1,000-unit development, it has a ripple effect. There needs to be community awareness."
Recognizing the impact of growth across the county, Wake County Government established a Blue Ribbon Committee of community leaders in December 2005 to study the long-term needs for facilities (schools, libraries and jails) and infrastructure (roads, water, sewer, etc.). The committee will issue a final report on its recommendations to county commissioners by May 30, 2006.