The Alamance-Burlington school board is scheduled to hold the first of two “community voice sessions” at Williams High School tonight as part of a redistricting process intended to balance out enrollment among ABSS schools to alleviate crowding at several schools where school officials say that enrollment has outstripped capacity.
The first listening session is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. tonight in the auditorium at Williams High School in Burlington. A second listening session is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. next Wednesday, January 28, in the auditorium at Southeast High School.
Earlier this month, ABSS officials asked families and community members to complete an online survey about the process; the deadline to complete the survey was last Thursday, January 15, and the results are expected to be discussed at a future school board meeting.
In addition to balancing school enrollments, ABSS hopes to ensure efficient transportation for students and provide every student with access to a strong learning environment, school officials said in a release.
“Our district has changed over time. Some neighborhoods have grown while others have shifted, and enrollment is no longer balanced,” ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming said in the release. “We are committed to handling this process with care and transparency. We are gathering community input before any zone options are even created because your voice matters in guiding these future decisions.”
“There are no maps or draft plans yet; instead, leadership and consultants will hear directly from the public,” school officials emphasized in their release.
School board members heard last Tuesday afternoon from a consulting firm, SchoolCAMP, which is part of the Operations Research and Education Laboratory (OREd) at N.C. State University, and has been hired to analyze enrollment and attendance data that will be used to develop new attendance maps for ABSS.
Consultants from OREd had told school board members last August that they project that school system’s total enrollment will increase by 13.7 percent (3,056 students) by 2035.
Residential growth in the county had put enrollment at Alexander Wilson, A.O., Eastlawn, Elon, and Garrett elementary schools over or near capacity during the previous 2024-25 school year, based on figures that the OREd consultants presented to the school board in mid-August 2025.
Reports of overcrowding at Garrett Elementary School had been the subject of repeated complaints during numerous Mebane city council meetings in recent years.
The OREd consultants also told school board members that enrollment at Southern Middle School (821 students) had exceeded its capacity (756 students) by 65 students during the 2024-25 and forecast that overcrowding would continue at Southern Middle School every year over the next decade.
Six of the seven high schools remain below capacity, with the exception of Williams High School, where enrollment (1,195 students) was below its stated capacity (1,208) by 13 students at the end of the second month of the 2024-25 school year, according to the capacity study that OREd developed for ABSS earlier last year.
ABSS families will be notified later this spring if their children’s attendance zones change, and the new attendance maps will take effect this August, when the 2026-27 school year starts, Fleming told school board members last fall.
The superintendent forecast at the time that hiring an outside firm to develop new attendance zones would take politics out of the process.
“They would be the only ones to make changes to the lines,” Fleming told board members last September. “The board would vote, if you wanted to; you could still adjust the lines; but the board would have to vote on that. It’s, I believe, a very fair way to ensure balancing… When certain individuals know you are drawing the lines, they also know that you can change the lines. It really changes the conversation.”
New school attendance boundaries will be designed using computer analytics and the county’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping software, while incorporating factors such as manmade and natural boundaries, such as roads; proximity to schools; and future development plans, Fleming said at the time.
Draft attendance maps will be presented to the public at two upcoming “solutions sessions,” currently scheduled for 6:00 p.m. on March 3 at Williams High School and for 6:00 p.m. on March 4 at Southeast High School
Meanwhile, ABSS has formed an advisory committee to assist in the redistricting process.
The advisory committee members were selected by the superintendent’s office, with input from other ABSS officials, such as principals who helped identify parents and teachers who might be willing to serve on the committee, ABSS chief communications officer Emily-Lynn Adkins told The Alamance News Wednesday.
The committee members include a principal, teacher, and parent representative from each of the high school attendance zones, as well as an elementary and middle school within each of those zones to provide a cross-section, Adkins explained. The city managers in most of the county’s municipalities worked with their city councils to identify who would represent their jurisdictions on the advisory committee, she added.
The final attendance maps are tentatively expected to be presented to school board members this spring, according to the school system’s release.
