Berkeley County School District eyes growth

***image1***

DI/Cainhoy targeted as a priority area

Berkeley County School District officials have suspected for years that the Daniel Island School was rapidly nearing its 1200-student capacity. Now they have the data to back it up.

If projections reported at the December 8 meeting of the Berkeley County School Board prove to be true, the student population at Daniel Island School is expected to hit 1212 by the year 2012. And that, according to Superintendent Dr. Anthony Parker, is a conservative estimate.

"I think Daniel Island is going to be far above that conservative model," said Parker. "…It’s going to mushroom pretty fast, this whole area is going to. The Cainhoy Peninsula is really going to take off."

District leaders are paying close attention to the numbers here, as well as in all other areas covered by the school district. The new data was collected as part of a comprehensive growth study conducted last June by the Operations Research and Education Laboratory (OREL) at North Carolina State University. Using an "Integrated Planning for School and Community" model, the study revealed that seven of the district’s 38 schools are at or above capacity now. Within five years, the total jumps to 14 schools. By 2019, about 50 percent of schools could be at maximum capacity or higher.

"This (study) gives the administration and the board some targets to work on, where we currently have issues and where issues are coming, so we have time to plan for what we’re going to do years in the future," said Berkeley County School Board Chair Doug Cooper, who presented the study findings at the board meeting. "…This takes a lot of the speculation, guesswork and perception out of this."

Next year, the Daniel Island School would be in a "yellow" category, which means the facility is expected to be at 95 to 100 percent capacity. Other schools in the district are already there. For example, Sangaree Elementary School and Sangaree Intermediate School, with a combined capacity of 1300, have a current student population of 1501. Hanahan High School (HHS) is exceeding its 950 capacity by seven students. According to the study, HHS will likely experience a dip in population for the next few years, but by 2015, the school turns "red" with over 105 percent capacity. Hanahan Middle is expected to run into problems by the year 2013, when student numbers reach over 800 (current capacity is 850). Stratford High is already bursting at the seams with an 1800-capacity and 2131 students. For Cainhoy Elementary Middle School, the picture is much brighter. The K-8 facility is labeled "green," meaning it is expected to stay under capacity for the next ten years.

"The scary thing about what we’re facing is once this growth hits and starts coming into this district at a level that’s pretty intense, we’ve got to have the ability to move forward fast," said Parker.

"This (growth model) is a living exercise and a tool that we will constantly be able to leverage in making our decisions on how to invest and where to invest properly," added Cooper.

There are several key findings that contributed to the OREL study’s predictions, which were based on community and regional data, economic and demographic forecasts, land use studies, and optimization formulas. For the period of 2000-2008, Berkeley County’s population grew by close to 17,000 people, or 18.7 percent, a rate higher than the average statewide population increase.

"This year was a bad economy," said Cooper. "Housing sales were down, but the district still grew by a significant number of children."

The greatest "hot spots" in the region for growth, based on data collected, are the Goose Creek/U.S. 52 corridor, the U.S. 176 corridor (Cane Bay, Carnes Crossroads, etc), and the Cainhoy Peninsula, where a number of developments are either on the ground or planned for the near future. In the Cainhoy and Daniel Island area alone, another 4,000 plus residential and multi-family units are possible. That number doesn’t include potential development of the 8500-acre Guggenheim Tract (an area the size of peninsular Charleston), where as many as 16,000 units could be constructed off Clements Ferry Road.

"The (Guggenheim) property has restrictions requiring development to take place in 150-acre increments," stated the authors of the study. "There is no known time at which development might occur."

The tract is still being considered for a possible new high school that would serve the Daniel Island and Cainhoy/Huger areas, said Cooper. Currently, the majority of students in these schools are zoned to go to Hanahan High School after completing eighth grade. Berkeley County is expected to issue a bond referendum for voters next year that would cover the construction of three to four new schools in the district, one of which would likely be placed along the Clements Ferry corridor.

"We need a high school offload for Hanahan," said Cooper. "…(Assuming) we can be successful with a referendum in 2010, I would say 2013 is the earliest we could hope to see doors open on any new facility," said Cooper.

Federal "No Child Left Behind" legislation currently gives students attending Title 1 schools (40 percent or more students in the school attendance zone are from low-income families) the option of transferring to other schools if the home school is not meeting standards for Adequate Yearly Progress. Based on this provision, students zoned for Cainhoy Elementary/Middle School have had the option to transfer to the Daniel Island School for the last several years, but that may soon be changing based on Cainhoy’s improved performance.

"We have capacity at Cainhoy and we are hopeful we will be able to avoid the No Child Left Behind transfers starting next year," said Cooper. "We are still waiting on the results that we hope will take Cainhoy off the ‘failing list.’ Then we will be able to enforce existing attendance zones and utilize the excess capacity at Cainhoy."

"Any time you have a growth area, the district line is going to have to constrict and it becomes a smaller district based on that," added Parker, who noted that some adjustments to attendance lines will likely be made. "NCLB reauthorization is going to have an impact, to what degree we just don’t know."

In the meantime, school officials plan to utilize their newly gleaned data in the most effective ways possible. Through an "open and transparent" process, they hope to keep Berkeley County residents involved and informed every step of the way, said Cooper.

"The (OREL) data is exciting in that it brings data modeling to the decision-making process," he added. "I am hopeful that this level of information will help the taxpayers feel we are going in the right direction for the right reasons and be able to aggressively support a referendum when it comes…As money gets tighter and tighter, we need to do a better and better job of where we spend it."