Enrollment caps would be lifted at 3 western Wake schools under new proposal

Removing the caps would allow families new to the area to enroll their children in the schools.

The school board plans to vote in February on removing enrollment caps from Apex Elementary and from Highcroft and Mills Park elementary schools in Cary. The board will also consider changing the overflow school for two other capped schools: Changing the overflow school for Parkside Elementary from Adams Elementary to Carpenter Elementary and changing the overflow school for Panther Creek High from Green Level High to Green Hope High. Both of the new overflow schools are closer to the capped schools.

Officials with the Wake County Public School System presented the proposal to the school board’s facilities committee Wednesday, to sounds of joy from board members.

“This is like Christmas,” Board Member Lindsay Mahaffey said.

This year, the school system isn’t asking the board to add any caps. Enrollment has stayed about the same, over 162,000 districtwide. Charter schools and private schools have opened in the area as the school system has more slowly opened new buildings, though it plans to open six more in western Wake County during the 2025-26 school year.

The system isn’t asking for many changes for this year but plans to bring more changes next year, in a anticipation of the next schools opening in the fall of 2025, Marcella S. Rorie, district senior director of long-range planning, told the board Wednesday.

Those new schools coming online are partly why — even with continued population growth in those areas — the school system believes it can remove the caps at the three schools.

Enrollment caps are put in place when overcrowding has gotten so severe at a school that families need to be rerouted to other schools. A cap doesn’t affect current families at that school. A cap affects only families that move into the assignment zone after the cap is put in place. Those families are sent to a designated “overflow” school that has enough room to accept new families.

Sometimes, a school is capped but administrators can make exceptions for new students in grade levels that still have space. For instance, if kindergarten through fourth grade have too many students but fifth grade has a few spots.

State law limits the maximum number of students who can be in a classroom in kindergarten through third grades. That law has prompted the school board to cap many elementary schools.

Caps are frustrating for many new families moving into Wake County, who often don’t realize that the school their neighborhood is assigned to is full and that their children won’t get able to go there.

In the case of Apex Elementary, the school is still overcrowded, but only at 5.6% above capacity. Highcroft and Mills Park are now at about 93% of capacity.

The school system will also gather feedback this spring from some families on what they think about a calendar change at their child’s school. No calendar changes would be made until the 2025-26 school year, and the district doesn’t have a proposal yet.

District officials are looking at solutions for overcrowded schools that won’t be relieved by new school buildings any time soon. “Multi-track” year-round schools can enroll more students because students attend in shifts, or “tracks.” At the same time, district officials are identifying whether any multi-track year-round schools are under-enrolled.