Aiken County Public Schools will create a new elementary school in Area 3 to alleviate overcrowding at Byrd Elementary in Graniteville.
The school, which would serve 400 students, would be at the current Byrd Learning Center, the district’s adult education center, off Ascauga Lake Road in Graniteville. The building was the first Byrd Elementary School, which was dedicated in 1955, until the district opened the new Byrd Elementary on nearby Weldon Way in 2008.
The district expects to open the new school in August 2019. The district would use existing funds for the school.
“We plan to repurpose what we have to meet our need for a new elementary school using funds currently available in our capital expenditure budget,” District Superintendent Dr. Sean Alford said. “We’ll open up the façade of the school to Ascauga Lake Road. It will be a school that the community will be proud of.”
Existing attendance boundaries in Area 3, which includes the Midland Valley area, would be modified to accommodate the new school, relieve overcrowding and allow for anticipated growth in the Graniteville area.
King Laurence, the district’s chief officer of administration, said about 300 students would be reassigned from Byrd to the new elementary school.
“The new school will create room for the additional growth that we anticipate in the Byrd area, and the Byrd Learning Center will go back to its original purpose as an elementary school,” he said.
With the addition of the new school, all Area 3 elementary schools would house their own pre-kindergarten classes, allowing 4K students to begin school in their own elementary buildings. Currently, 4K students zoned for Byrd attend Gloverville Elementary in Gloverville and Jefferson Elementary in Bath because of overcrowding at Byrd.
The Byrd Learning Center has been the district’s adult education location and a training site for programs and meetings for several years. During that time, the district installed new flooring, an HVAC system and roof, and made other enhancements to the building. Additional improvements would include a new cafeteria.
The Byrd Learning Center would be relocated to the former Midland Valley Prep site, which the district acquired recently, on Jefferson Davis Highway.
“We’re excited for this new, highly visible location and strategic position for Adult Education next door to Aiken Technical College,” Alford said. “We were able to secure the property for much less than projected, and we’re looking forward to opening the new location in August 2018.”
Plans for the new school and relocation of the Adult Education center followed an extensive study of student enrollment trends and population change in Aiken County.
During a series of town hall meetings last winter and spring, the district provided the public information about population statistics and concerns, particularly overcrowding in Area 3 schools, including not only Byrd Elementary but also Midland Valley High.
After the meetings, district administrators created the Enrollment Trends Workshop, which included a community representative from each of the district’s five attendance areas. The group’s goals were to develop the guidelines for an external, professional demographic study and to address overcrowding at Byrd Elementary immediately.
The Enrollment Trends Workshop and district leaders temporarily alleviated overcrowding at Byrd by adding four mobile classrooms at the beginning of the school year.
The district also contracted Cropper GIS and McKibben Demographics of Delaware, Ohio, to provide possible options to modify attendance area boundaries based on three guidelines as follows:
• Demographic and enrollment balance within defined geographic areas and attendance area boundaries.
• Demographic and enrollment balance to a limited degree across defined geographic areas and area attendance boundaries.
• Comprehensive demographic and enrollment balance across the entire school district.
“We had professionals take a look at our school district with fresh eyes in hopes of gaining additional feedback and information,” King said. “We have really accomplished a lot in a short period of time.”
The consultants established several key points as follows:
• Area 3 currently is over 100 percent use in elementary and high schools, and additional seats are needed for students because of current capacity and anticipated growth.
• Area 2, which includes schools in North Augusta and Belvedere, use is high and requires relief for future growth.
• Area 1, which includes schools in and around the City of Aiken, are demographically imbalanced and a clean feeder system does not exist from elementary to high school.
• A large number of students in Aiken County Public Schools, 3,600 or 15 percent of the district’s total student population, attend schools other than their zoned schools, which affects school use.
The consultants’ study revealed the distribution of public school students in Aiken County had shifted about 3 to 4 miles west of the City of Aiken during the last 20 years.
“Twenty years ago, the City of Aiken was where the population was dense,” Dr. Jerome McKibben of Cropper GIS said. “Because the distribution of students changes every 10 to 15 years, districts should look at their attendance lines about every 15 years. The longer a community holds off from doing that, the more radical the response must be because the distribution of seats and students becomes increasingly imbalanced with each passing year."
None of the consultants’ projections and findings consider the possibility of future population growth from the establishment of a cyber command center at Fort Gordon in Augusta.
“Right now, it’s hoping and not fact,” McKibben said. “Once it’s fact, you can add them into your forecast. Don’t put those numbers into your planning until it’s up and running.”
At its meeting Tuesday, the Aiken County School Board also approved several recommendations that would reduce overcrowding and prepare for future growth and update facilities and improve safety at schools built in the 1950s in Areas 1, 2 and 3.
The recommendations, if approved by the School Board, would expand Midland Valley High.
The district also would expand and upgrade Millbrook Elementary in Area 1 in Aiken, which is at 94 percent use with boundary adjustments, and Belvedere Elementary, which is at 96 percent use, and Hammond Hill Elementary in North Augusta, which is at 97 percent use, in Area 2.
The district also would build a new elementary school and a new middle school on donated land in Area 2.
The district currently does not have funds to begin construction and improvements on any of the projects proposed in the recommendations.
The district will hold a six town hall meetings to get feedback and input from the public on the recommendations. The first meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 6 at Leavelle McCampbell Middle School in Graniteville.
Larry Wood covers education for the Aiken Standard.
Article by Larry Wood, Aiken Standard