The Alamance-Burlington school system could need a new elementary school soon, and possibly a new middle school within the next several years, according to superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming, based on a school capacity study that has been developed for ABSS by the Operations Research and Education Laboratory (OREd) housed within the Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) at N.C. State University.
That was the takeaway from a presentation that the consultants made during the school board’s work session Tuesday afternoon.
Enrollment (769 students) at Garrett Elementary had exceeded its stated capacity (722 students) by 47 students during the second month of the 2024-25 school year – and is projected to exceed capacity by 115 students during the upcoming 2025-26 school year (see accompanying out-of-capacity tables that the consultants developed for ABSS).
The consultants’ calculations also showed that enrollment (821 students) at Southern Middle School had exceeded its capacity (756 students) by 65 students at the end of the second month of the 2024-25 school year; Southern Middle is projected to be less overcrowded (exceeding capacity by 46 students) in 2025-26, according to the capacity study that was presented Tuesday by Thomas Dudley, a program manager for OREd, and Bryan Godfrey, a research associate with OREd.
Dudley said that population growth in Alamance County had outpaced what he and his colleagues had anticipated, telling the board, “The residential development in the area is substantial.”
To underscore their predictions for potential population growth in the county, the OREd consultants said there are currently 121 residential developments, with a total a total of 13,000 lots and/or units, planned in Alamance County and targeted for completion by 2035.
The consultants are also projecting that enrollment in ABSS schools will increase by 13.7 percent between the 2025-26 and 2034-35 school years, the latter of which coincides with the year in which they said the 121 residential developments would be built out.
In other words, ABSS schools would enroll an additional 3,056 students over the next 10 years. That’s in contrast to the school system’s overall enrollment, which has remained relatively static, and in some cases declined, over the past 10 school years (see accompanying chart).
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The consultants have also projected that an additional 384 students will enroll in ABSS schools for the upcoming school year that starts on August 25.
If their estimate holds, that would represent a 1.8 percent increase in enrollment from the previous school year, from 21,915 students at the end of the first month of the 2024-25 school year to a total of 22,299 students as of the second month of the upcoming school year. [The consultants didn’t indicate during their presentation to the board why they’d used enrollment figures for the second month of future school years.]
“We dig into this at the school level, by grade and by school, and are able to use that information and model how cohorts are going to move forward over time,” Dudley, the program manager for OREd, told school board members Tuesday afternoon. (See accompanying tables developed by OREd for a breakdown of which elementary, middle, and high schools that the consultants project to be near or over capacity during each of the next 10 years.)
Enrollment at five elementary schools is projected to be at or near “capacity,” i.e., the number of students they were built to accommodate, during the 2025-26 school year: Alexander Wilson, A.O., Eastlawn, Elon, Garrett, and Grove Park Elementary, according to the consultants. By 2034-25, 10 of the 20 ABSS elementary schools are projected to be what the consultants termed “out-of-capacity,” based on the figures presented to the school board Tuesday afternoon.
By comparison, enrollment is projected to remain below capacity at 10 elementary schools throughout the next decade: Andrews; B. Everett Jordan; Eastlawn; Hillcrest; Holt; Newlin; North Graham; Pleasant Grove; South Mebane; and Sylvan, based on OREd’s forecast.
“Resident live births” are an important part of the equation, because “a large share are going to become your kindergarteners five years down the line,” Dudley told the board (see accompanying chart showing birth rate trends).
At the middle school level, Southern is the only middle school currently over capacity – by 65 students – based on enrollment figures for the second month of the 2024-25 school year that the consultants used to develop their forecast. Enrollment at Hawfields and Woodlawn Middle schools is projected to outstrip capacity within the next two years. Turrentine would remain below capacity until the 2033-34 school year, when enrollment (955 students) is projected to be over capacity by three students (see accompanying table).
However, enrollment at Broadview, Graham, and Western Middle schools is projected to remain below their stated capacities during the next decade, according to OREd.
Most high schools projected to remain below capacity until 2031
At the high school level, enrollment is projected to exceed capacity at Williams High School by the 2031-32 school year and at three high schools (Williams, Western, and Southeast) by 2032-33, based on the out-of-capacity tables that the consultants presented Tuesday afternoon.
The out-of-capacity tables are “a quick visual way of being able to see where your facility needs are and where they will be in the future,” Dudley explained. “In short, if you see a school that’s in the red for a given year, that means it’s overcrowded,” or has more students than available seats.
Another representative from OREd who briefly assisted with the presentation told the board that the data is a tool to identify ways to ease overcrowding at certain schools. In general, most school planners recommend two options: adjusting student attendance zones and “balancing out capacity,” the other OREd representative said Tuesday afternoon, apparently referring to an expansion and/or construction of a new school. There are also “temporary” options, such as a mobile unit/trailer, he said, adding that school facility planners typically urge school boards and administrators to think in terms of long-term solutions – meaning brick-and-mortar schools.
Next steps
“I do think there’s some opportunities for a middle and elementary; I do think there’s some opportunities to look at a new elementary school soon,” Fleming said after the presentation. At the same time, he said, even if ABSS had the money in hand today to build a new elementary school, it would be at least three to five years before construction would be complete. “It doesn’t take long before you’re three, four, five years down the road,” he said.
“I do want to have a brief conversation with the board in terms of redistricting, versus new schools,” the superintendent added. “On the capacity side, we did adjust our capacity numbers based off two or three different things [including elementary class size reductions that were legislatively-mandated several years ago]. We don’t need closet classrooms; we don’t need a classroom subdivided to make two classrooms. Have we done that? Yes, but we prefer not to, so we’re going back to the original core capacity of the brick-and-mortar building [for cafeterias, gymnasiums, and other “core” areas].”
Methodolody
To forecast the future enrollment trends in ABSS – and identify which schools would be over-capacity in future school years – the consultants used 10-year economic and demographic forecasts for Alamance County; school locations and attendance boundaries; commercial/industrial development; parcel data and subdivision lots from the county’s GIS mapping system; birth rates (“resident live births); and other factors that they said factor into future population growth, such as water/sewer and transportation infrastructure, housing prices, and employment opportunities.
The consultants also met earlier this year with Alamance County’s planning director, as well other local officials and planners from each of the county’s municipalities, to discuss infrastructure development plans, recent subdivision permits and zoning approvals, available land, and comprehensive land use plans that may have been approved for their respective jurisdictions.
“We’ve got three or four megacenters being built – Chatham, Randolph, Guilford,” school board vice chairman Dan Ingle pointed out later during the discussion, referring to the Chatham-Siler City Advanced Manufacturing Megasite near Moncure; the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite near Asheboro; and the Piedmont-Triangle International Aerospace Center near Greensboro. The N.C. Chamber has projected that 100,000 people will move into the four-county area that includes Alamance County within the next few years, Ingle said.
“[Megasites] have the potential to bring large job totals in the long run,” Dudley acknowledged, while adding, “there’s a more indirect relationship to new school populations than most people realize.”
