Brownwood school officials are facing what they consider a “good problem to have” with high enrollment numbers and limited space, especially in their elementary schools.
Total enrollment at BISD as of Monday is 3596 students which is up 56 students from just last Monday. Although many of the students coming into the district are from several grade levels, the elementary schools are shuffling students to help make room. Some students who had transferred from outside the district to East Elementary have been given the choice to either go to Northwest Elementary or go back to their home districts due to high enrollment. Due to some of the schools being at or near capacity, the school district has even had to turn some transfer requests down altogether..
“It’s a good problem to have; we’re excited about our enrollment,” said Deputy Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Liesa Land. “We don’t want to turn anyone away.”
To help alleviate overcrowded campuses, BISD Superintendent Reece Blincoe recommended that the district look at expanding East Elementary to help with the issue.
“Last week we met with our architects to start thinking about an expansion at East Elementary School,” Blincoe said.
Currently East Elementary, the smallest elementary school in the district, has 300 students enrolled. District officials outlined how the addition of 4 to 6 new classrooms at East would help with the overcrowded campuses. Blincoe said that although a possible expansion of East Elementary will help for next year, there are still concerns about large enrollment numbers this year.
“We do have one more time period to get over that we’re still concerned about and that is after Labor Day,” stated Blincoe. “Here we are, we sent a lot of kids over there (to Northwest Elementary) to try and equal out the load and we may have an issue if a bunch of students show up after Labor Day. We will have to address it at that time.”
Blincoe said that there is one available classroom at East Elementary. He said if enrollment numbers do spike next week, the district could hire a new teacher and use the available classroom.
The BISD school board will address the possible construction plan at its September 13th meeting as a possible action item.
