Wake could put enrollment caps on 22 schools in 2024. See who’s on and off the list.
Wake County is cutting back on the number of schools under enrollment caps, but it could lead to more schools moving to a year-round calendar to help with overcrowding.
Wake County currently has enrollment caps on 25 schools that are causing more than 1,000 students to be sent to a more distant overflow school. But school administrators recommended this week immediately dropping enrollment caps on three schools with the hope of dropping caps on six more schools next year.
In the short term, the school board will vote Feb. 6 on capping 22 schools for the 2024-25 school year. But over the spring, Wake will survey families about calendar conversion because multi-track year-round schools can hold more students than traditional-calendar schools.
“Capping has been a solution that we’ve used more often over the years,” Glenn Carrozza, assistant superintendent for school choice, planning and assignment, told the school board’s facilities committee on Wednesday.
“In recent years we’ve tried to scale that back because the transportation resources are just not there anymore. Now we’re looking at reassignments and we’re now introducing calendar conversions as a a potential solution to deal with the overcrowding.”
Dropping caps at these schools
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 may be assigned to an overflow school that has space.
But it’s challenging running buses to overflow schools at a time of rampant bus driver shortages.
Administrators recommend dropping the caps at Apex Elementary and Highcroft Drive and Mills Park elementary schools in Cary. Marcella Rorie, senior director long range planning, said the opening of new schools and the recently approved assignment plan has freed up space at those schools.
Mills Park Elementary has been capped since 2016.
“Oh my gosh, this is like Christmas,” school board member Lindsay Mahaffey said about the Mills Park news.
List of capped schools
Caps are recommended to remain in place at:
▪ Abbotts Creek Elementary in Raleigh
▪ Alston Ridge Elementary in Cary
▪ Apex Friendship Elementary in Apex
▪ Beaverdam Elementary in Raleigh
▪ Cedar Fork Elementary in Morrisville
▪ Holly Grove Elementary in Holly Springs
▪ Holly Ridge Elementary in Holly Springs
▪ Hortons Creek Elementary in Cary
▪ Northwoods Elementary in Cary
▪ Oakview Elementary in Apex
▪ Olive Chapel Elementary in Apex
▪ Parkside Elementary in Morrisville (Overflow school would change to Carpenter Elementary.)
▪ River Bend Elementary in Raleigh
▪ Rogers Lane Elementary in Raleigh
▪ Scotts Ridge Elementary in Apex
▪ Weatherstone Elementary in Cary
▪ White Oak Elementary in Apex
▪ Apex Friendship Middle in Apex
▪ Mills Park Middle in Cary
▪ Apex Friendship High in Apex
▪ Heritage High in Wake Forest
▪ Panther Creek High in Cary (Overflow school would change to Green Hope High.)
Calendar conversion on the table
In addition to capping, other ways Wake can address overcrowding include student reassignment and conversion of schools to a multi-track year-round calendar.
Multi-track year-round schools can hold 20% to 30% more students than other schools by splitting the campus into four groups, with three in session and one on break at all times. Some families don’t like the year-round calendar because it eliminates the long summer break in favor of three-week breaks throughout the school year.
But Carrozza said administrators may have to recommend converting a school to a multi-track calendar when they’ve exhausted other options.
“We have limited resources, and those resources we need to utilize as best as possible,” Carrozza said. “Utilizing multi-track year-round schools, especially at the elementary level, utilizes that capacity so that students can go to their closest school.”
But at the same time Carrozza said they’ll look at dropping the multi-track calendar at some under-enrolled schools. He said it’s not always possible to assign more students into those schools, especially when other nearby schools also aren’t full.
Carrozza said they’ll use public feedback to help develop the next assignment plan and to come up with calendar conversion recommendations.
Wake would be in a better position to deal with the overcrowding, according to Carrozza, if not for the state’s limits on class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. That has cost Wake 9,000 seats.
“We have K-3 class size legislation that significantly hampers our district’s ability to house students at their most proximate schools,” Carrozza said.
