D-49 weighs options for easing overcrowding at middle schools

Rhianna Hergenroeder, 11, and her sister Bethanie, 12, have no trouble giving examples of overcrowding at the school they attend in Falcon District 49:  Skyview Middle School.

“Some of my classes have 40 kids,” Rhianna says.

Bethanie chimes in, “We have six lunch periods and the lines go down the side of the lunch room and way out in the hall.”

Their concerns are also those of Falcon School District 49 officials who are wrestling with three options to relieve overcrowding that is mostly affecting their middle schools.

The girls’ mother, Annette  Hergenroeder, was one of scores of parents attending an open house at Skyview Middle School last week to look at potential boundary changes and mark preferences on a district survey. More meetings are planned this week. Planners hope to have their recommendations to the school board by Oct. 8.

One of the options — estimated to be the least expensive but possibly the most controversial — is to move 375 middle school students to Sand Creek High School, where attendance is expected to drop from 1,300 this year to about 900 next year, due, in part, to the opening of a new high school. (Editor's note: This reflects a correction from the original version, which misstated the current Sand Creek population.)

Most of those middle school students would come from Skyway, which has 1,300 students crammed into a school built for 900.

Melissa Andrews, a D-49 planner, said Skyway’s hallways are so crowded that fights have broken out. There are six staggered lunchtimes, teachers are overworked, programs suffer, and the sewer system backs up.

“There is no ideal solution until we can pass a bond and build new schools. But we have to do something now,” Andrews said.

But the idea of sending middle school kids to high school has some parents worried.

“The younger children would be exposed to high school students, and maybe even alcohol, drugs, teen pregnancies,” said parent Lucretia Bryant.

District officials say the younger students would be isolated, walled off by unlocked fire doors. There would be a closed campus so younger students would not encounter students smoking off campus. And officials would implement staggered start times, lunches and ending times, so there would be no contact between the middle schoolers and high schoolers.

That plan also is fueling rumors. Some high school students at the open house said their teachers warned they would lose their advanced placement classes and sports, but Andrews said that’s not true.

Two other options are on the table, and while they don’t seem to have generated the controversy that the Sand Creek one has, both involve changes that are likely to receive some flak from parents.

Superintendent Brad  Schoeppey  is the first to acknowledge that such changes are never easy.

“It’s good to be a growing district, But there is also pain to go through,” he said. “Some parents are very passionate about which options they don’t want. There is no perfect solution or we would have chosen it.”

For years, Falcon has struggled to keep up with a relentless increase in student population, which has given it the distinction as the fifth-fastest growing district in the state. Part of the reason for the boom in the district is that, as Colorado Springs grew, there were few places for new developments except the open areas east and northeast of the city served by D-49.

D-49’s growth has slowed in the last couple of years because of the dismal economy, but officials expect a resurgence, assuming development of the 23,000-acre Banning Lewis Ranch continues. By one projection, the district’s enrollment will grow from 10,800 students now to more than 20,000 by 2016. Another model places the 2016 enrollment at 17,193.

At last week’s open house, exasperated parent Irene Pabalan wondered why the district doesn’t “just build some more schools,” but it’s not that easy. Bond elections funded schools in 1995, 1998 and 2001. But in 2003, 2004 and 2005 the district had to use mill levy overrides because there was no bond capacity available. The district also has relied on money from developers in exchange for land.

The district hopes to pass a school bond within the next five years, Andrews said.

“But first we have to demonstrate that we are making the best utilization of the space we have,” she said.

Even with new bond construction, however, the problem may not go away.

“By that time we will probably need even more space,” Andrews said.

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