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School bells ring

Posted on August 30, 2007 by Staff

 
There were plenty of officials and dignitaries on hand, but school board chair Jamezetta Bedford got the honors at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at Carrboro High School last Thursday.  Photo by Jock Lauterer

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

Despite enrollment being somewhat higher than projected, the first day of school across the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district went unusually well as more than 11,000 students headed back to class, school officials said.

“So far, everything’s running relatively smoothly,” said Steve Scroggs, assistant superintendent for support services with Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. “We’re knocking on wood right now.”

The district’s enrollment was 11,581 on Monday – 236 more than district officials had projected. However, enrollment fluctuates as schools determine which students are actually attending class, and district officials expect the numbers to decrease slightly.

Still, the difference between projections and enrollment is considerable, and school officials may need to find additional resources.

“It’s unusual to see it off that much,” said Stephanie Knott, assistant superintendent for community relations.

If numbers remain 100 or more above projections at the end of the second month of school, the district will be eligible to apply for additional funding from the state, Scroggs said.

The district saw the widest disparity between projections and enrollment at the high school level, he said.

“High school growth has taken off,” said Scroggs, adding that the number of students enrolled in the district’s high schools is 140 more than previously anticipated.

Carrboro High School has 627 enrolled students, while school officials had projected 561. But because the school is brand new, it’s far from capacity, and the first day of classes there was a success, despite some issues in the parking lot.

Parents dropping their kids off were confused by the school’s traffic pattern, which includes two roundabouts and allows only right turns.

Traffic seemed to run more smoothly the second day at Carrboro High, and students seem to be settling into their new high school, Knott said, adding that they were “extraordinarily well-behaved as they arrived in the morning.”

“It’s great to see kids in that school building,” Scroggs said.

Projections and enrollment were closer at the elementary school level. However, as district officials expected, seven of nine elementary schools are above capacity.

Relief will come in 2008 with the opening of the new elementary school in Carrboro.

Besides enrollment issues, the district ran into few glitches on Monday.

Scroggs said there were issues with school buses, which is fairly normal at the start of the school year. At the end of one bus’s route Monday afternoon, five children remained on the bus, and not a single one spoke English.

School staff determined where the students needed to go and they eventually made it home safely.

“By the end of the week, we’ll have everything ironed out,” Scroggs said.
Other issues were small and easy to fix, he added.

“As expected, you always have a few kids who show up at the wrong school,” Scroggs said, noting that the district also had “kids who just showed up and we didn’t know they were enrolled.”

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