Wake schools proposes enrollment cap at new western Wake school

Wake County school officials want to cap enrollment at an elementary school that first opened just six months ago, and remove a cap at another school.

The school system proposed its plan during the school board’s facilities committee meeting Wednesday.

The changes would require three new bus routes for overflow students — a complication that irked some school board members already frustrated by the district’s bus driver shortage.

“What happens if we can’t find three new bus drivers?” Board Member Sam Hershey said. Many parents will ask why the district is capping another school and creating three more bus routes when many routes are already uncovered.

Committee Chairman Chris Heagarty said he was almost late to Wednesday’s meeting because his son’s bus didn’t have a driver.

He said the school board can’t look at capping overcrowded schools as the same solution it was years ago, when the district had more bus drivers to move students around. Some students are traveling across their towns, he said.

He suggested the district look more closely at solutions other than caps, such as increasing trailer capacity when possible, in further meetings.

Apex Friendship Elementary School enrolled more than 750 students this year, with capacity for only 573 students. It doesn’t have any trailers for educating those extra students and does not have space to add them, Marcella S. Rorie, the district’s senior director of long-range planning, told the board. New students moving into the Apex Friendship Elementary attendance area would be sent to Baucom Elementary School.

Meanwhile, the system wants to remove the cap at Sycamore Creek Elementary, off of Leesville Road in North Raleigh.

Sycamore Creek Elementary has been capped since the 2017-18 school year but now enrolls below its capacity by more than 100 students. Students have been sent to Brier Creek Elementary since the cap was put in place.

The school board will consider the changes at a future meeting. The changes would keep the number of capped school at 25 schools — about one-eighth of all system schools.

The capped schools are often in the county’s western half, where growth has outpaced the number of school buildings being constructed there. At the same time, the district’s enrollment has stagnated for the past few years, with more students attending charter private schools, charter schools or homeschools or not attending school at all.

Capping a school means new families moving into the school’s assignment one would have to send their children to an overflow school. Families already living in those areas would still be able to send their children to their assigned school.

Caps are intended to be temporary solutions while the system increases school capacity or builds new schools. Caps can last several years.