Estados Unidos: Wake County is now the 15th largest school district in the country

Estados Unidos/Diciembre de 2016/Autor: T. Keung Hui/ Fuente: The News & Observer

RESUMEN:   El crecimiento se ha ralentizado en los últimos años, pero el sistema escolar del condado de Wake es ahora el distrito escolar 15 más grande de la nación y el décimo tercero más grande en los Estados Unidos continentales. El condado de Wake pasó a ocupar el 15º lugar por delante del Distrito Escolar Independiente de Dallas al agregar 2.369 estudiantes este año escolar para alcanzar una matrícula de 159.549 estudiantes. La matriculación de estudiantes casi se ha triplicado desde 1980, haciendo que Wake se eleve rápidamente a la lista de los sistemas escolares más grandes de la nación. «Lo que indica es que el condado de Wake continúa creciendo y la calidad del sistema escolar es el factor clave en ese crecimiento», dijo el miembro del consejo escolar Bill Fletcher. «Las personas que buscan mudarse aquí miran la calidad de nuestras escuelas».

Growth has slowed in recent years, but the Wake County school system is now the 15th largest school district in the nation and the 13th largest in the continental United States.

Wake County moved into 15th place ahead of the Dallas Independent School District by adding 2,369 students this school year to reach an enrollment of 159,549 students. Student enrollment has nearly tripled since 1980, causing Wake to rapidly ascend the list of the nation’s largest school systems.

“What it indicates is that Wake County continues to grow and the quality of the school system is the key factor in that growth,” said school board member Bill Fletcher. “People looking to move here look at the quality of our schools.”

Wake was the 40th largest school district in the nation with 73,263 students when Fletcher was first elected to the school board in 1993.

Wake remains the largest school system in North Carolina. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system is the next largest district in the state and the 18th largest in the nation.

Growth in Wake has led to challenges such as reassigning students to fill new schools and to reduce crowding, placing enrollment restrictions on overcrowded schools and adding large numbers of trailers on some campuses.

“Growth presents its challenges,” said Fletcher, chairman of the board’s facilities committee. “I would rather be in a situation of trying to deal with growth than dealing with empty schools.”

But competition from charter schools, private schools and home schools means the district is now growing by around 2,000 students a year instead of by 3,000 students or more as in the past. The combination of slower growth and the opening of eight new Wake schools in the past two years has helped ease some of the pressure on the district.

Wake is reducing the number of schools under enrollment caps from 15 this year to 10 for the 2017-18 school year. Fewer schools will face enrollment restrictions that result in newly arriving families being kept out and sent to more distant schools that have space.

This school year, 14 percent of Wake students are taking classes in temporary classrooms such as trailers, storage closets and media centers. That’s down from 20.6 percent in 2005 and 16.9 percent four years ago.

Earlier this year, the school board and the Wake County Board of Commissioners agreed on a seven-year, $1.98 billion school construction program to keep up with the latest round of growth. The plan is supposed to be updated annually with the next school construction bond referendum potentially coming on the May 2018 ballot.

Fletcher said the new planning process will allow county leaders to more quickly react to growth and make adjustments.

Christina Lighthall, the school system’s senior director of facilities planning, said updated enrollment projections are scheduled to be presented to the facilities committee in January.

“We’re seeing sustained growth in our resident live births after seeing years of negative growth,” Lighthall said. “Obviously we’re a very attractive community. We’re looking at growth, and we’re growing daily.”

Over the past 20 years, the Wake County school system has added 74,010 students and grown by 87 percent.