As growth continues to be an issue at Fairbanks, district officials are working through strategies for handling increasing class sizes.
Superintendent Adham Schirg told the board of education last week that the district will have some capacity issues to consider that will need strategies to fix them moving forward.
He said there are really three main solutions to help deal with those issues.
“The first is limit open enrollment. We have done that and we continue to do that,” he said.
Over the last five years, the district has reduced open enrollment numbers from 147 students to 86 as this problem started to announce itself.
The current kindergarten class has 84 students, however, and Schirg said the upcoming class currently sits at 74 with two additional students set to join the district this week.
“If recent trends continue, this class will reach 80 by August,” he said. “Open enrollment will be flattened or declining. We will have very little to no new occupancy for students in grades one through five. Most current open enrollment numbers come from staff children.”
The second thing to handle capacity is to share spaces, especially in the high school and middle building. The third option is to build new, which also has been put into place by way of the current elementary addition being built.
“At the elementary school, we will have classrooms available from the addition in the near term. Two preschool classrooms was one more than what was projected 12 to 18 months ago,” Schirg said. “Right now, we know we’re walking into next year using two classrooms for preschool.”
The district is also reworking a levy concept after a ballot measure failed twice in the fall and spring. Funding from that levy would’ve brought work to the other buildings.
Schirg said capacity is the number one concern he has for the district looking ahead.
“Monitoring our capacities and open enrollment program is one strategy that we have to deal with those capacity issues,” he said.
In a message to the community last month, Schirg said as much saying, “From my lens, capacity is the biggest external unknown at this time,” he said. “While the district has completed two full enrollment studies and one enrollment check, this continues to be monitored on a daily basis across the school district.”
As the district works on the elementary addition, there is still a question around whether officials will want to return to the ballot for those additional dollars for the middle and high school building.
Schirg addressed those questions as well, saying Fairbanks would definitely not be back this November.
“I have received several questions about when Fairbanks will go back on the ballot. Ultimately, that is the Board of Education’s decision. Minimally, we will be off the ballot for the November 2024 cycle. One driving factor is the Ohio Facility Construction Commission,” he said in April. “We have elected into the Expedited Local Partnership Program where our school district receives credited dollars back from the state. A district has 12 months to raise the funds for the program. That window closes in June and we will have to start the process over since the ballot issues did not pass in November or March. That puts our schools outside of the November election cycle. My anticipation is the district will not be on the ballot minimally for the next 12 months.”