Wake caps enrollment at 4 more schools in fast-growing west

Four more schools will be capped for enrollment next year in Wake County, while two schools’ caps will disappear.

The Wake County Board of Education approved the changes Tuesday, along with a school calendar change for four schools no longer at stressed capacity.

The new enrollment caps are for Apex, Holly Ridge, Parkside and River Bend elementary schools. All are well above capacity, ranging from 110.4% to 126.4%.

The caps affect families moving into the base attendance areas and not families already residing there.

Overflow schools are Baucom and Penny road elementary schools for Apex, Middle Creek for Holly Ridge, Adams for Parkside and Fox Road for River Bend.

The changes would require 11 new school buses, more bus drivers and increased bus ride times for affected future students.

The board removed caps at Combs Elementary and Lead Mine Elementary schools. Both are slightly below 100% capacity.

The cost of transporting children farther away from their homes makes caps expensive for the district to do, Board Member Roxie Cash said.

“I cannot support that in any way,” Cash said. Cash voted in favor of the caps, along with the other seven board members, but says she doesn’t think the district should do them.

Board Member Jim Martin called the caps a temporary solution to a problem in a need of a longer-term solution.

“We need to have seats where the students are,” he said.

Board Member Christine Kushner said she believed parents would prefer larger class sizes to enrollment caps and year-round schools, but the district must follow small class size requirements for younger grades.

The state’s class size requirement reduces the number of students who can occupy the finite number of classrooms a school has. Glenn Carrozza, district assistant superintendent for school choice, planning and assignment, said that has resulted in the district losing 9,500 seats in its buildings since the requirement was passed in 2018.

The district can’t ask for a waiver from the class size requirement unless it’s during a school year in which a school had an unexpected 2% growth in enrollment, Superintendent Cathy Moore told the board. The district cannot ask for a waiver in anticipation of a high student population next year.

“I’ve asked, ‘Are there options that allow us to be more proactive?’ and there are not,” Moore said.

The district and board members have also discussed challenges, namely cost and labor, to building schools fast enough in faster growing parts of the county.

Stabile enrollment projections will change calendars at four schools next year.

Middle Creek Elementary, Banks Road Elementary, West Lake Elementary and West Lake Middle schools will now be year-round Track 4 only, instead of year-round multi-track.

Banks Road’s calendar change was added to the agenda Tuesday night and not previously discussed at the board’s most recent facilities committee meeting.

Cash was the lone vote against the calendar change measure.