It’s hard to know where to start in assessing the delusions of the current school board and school administration. (We’ll save an examination of their budgeting delusions for another week; let’s just look at their enrollment delusions for now.)
Unfortunately, they get a lot of help from school consultants, who are consistently off – and we mean way off – in their estimates of Alamance-Burlington school system enrollment growth.
According to ABSS, there were 22,389 students enrolled at the beginning of the current 2025-2026 school year.
But according to the firm that the school system has used (three times, now), the school system was supposed to have hit that level of enrollment more than a decade ago!
The consulting firm had been hired to do forecasts of ABSS enrollment three previous times – in 2013, 2015, and 2020 – and then again last year.
It’s last year’s projections that have served as the basis for Superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming’s wild-eyed claim that the county needs two more elementary schools and another middle school.
Trouble is the company’s estimates have consistently been overstated; in fact overstated in 14 out of 16 school years that they projected – so far.
And it’s been off – overstating the projected enrollment – by an average of 712 students per year.
We hardly think the county’s commissioners or taxpayers should proceed down the path of planning to build, or finance, new schools based on projections that have consistently shown to be significantly exaggerated.
ABSS’ overall enrollment is, and has been down – down by 390 students over the past decade, down 348 from seven years ago (2018-2019 school year).
So why do consultants think there’s going to be a sudden explosion in ABSS growth?
We’ve said before, there is certainly a lot of residential development going on across Alamance County.
But the “growth-is-everywhere” rhetoric doesn’t always translate to increased ABSS enrollment. Yes, Alamance County has been growing. There is a proverbial boom in residential construction from Gibsonville to Mebane.
But count on school officials to ignore several important details in the footnotes to growth, however. First, some of the growth is on the other side of the county lines – and therefore not the responsibility of Alamance County taxpayers.
We’ve mentioned before, but it should be emphasized that while both Gibsonville and Mebane have seen real spurts in growth, much of that has been on the Guilford County side of Gibsonville and the Orange County side of Mebane – lots of development up Lebanon Road in the northern part of Mebane (and Orange County) and Old Hillsborough/Bowman roads (also in Orange County).
Orange County, for instance, is looking at building a new elementary school on the Orange County side of Mebane. But that’s not an Alamance County expense.
Second, new housing does not carry with it the same expectation of school-aged children as it has in the past. Many developers have consistently noted to local city councils that much of the current housing demand is among two opposite ends of the spectrum who don’t have school-aged children: older residents and young singles or young couples.
Even the Raleigh consultants reluctantly acknowledged this trend. Buried deep within their report last fall is the admission that Alamance County’s population is “graying,” – i.e., with not as high a proportion of those of child-bearing age or with school-aged children.
We’ve said before, yes, there are lots of townhouses, apartments, and even some significant single-family home developments. But many of these cater to residents without children.
Another factor which has suppressed the growth in ABSS enrollment is dramatic increases in enrollment among school choice options – charter schools, private and Christian schools, and even parents who have decided to home school. A next likely area of expansion, according to state officials, will be virtual (or online) schools.
It is certainly shortsighted and increasingly naive to assume that all new school-age children will enroll in ABSS. In fact, 3,142 students were enrolled in the country’s four charter schools last year (a fifth opened in Mebane, across the county line, last fall); 2,787 were enrolled in private schools; and 2,025 were in home schools, or 7,954 total students whose parents opted for something other than ABSS.
This trend is particularly evident since the statewide school shutdown at the height of the pandemic, which closed ABSS schools for a full year, from March 2020 until March 2021.
Another factor that we didn’t mention before, but a number of readers pointed to, is the Trump Adminis-tration’s ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration across the country, beginning with those with criminal backgrounds.
The number of families who will be removed by virtue of the Trump Administration’s tough policies could be significant, especially inasmuch as illegal immigrants make up a substantial (though undeterminable) proportion of ABSS students. The main observable fact is that Hispanics now make up the second highest percentage of ABSS students – almost 30 percent at last count, compared to around 37 percent white, and a quarter who are black, according to the most recent available figures from ABSS.
In addition to those forcibly removed, another category is those families who may “self-deport,” in the Administration’s terms, with the hope among those families that they might ultimately get to come back to the U.S. through the legal immigration system.
Everyone’s favorite example of the crowded conditions in the county is Garrett Elementary in Mebane; significantly, it is almost the only example.
Garrett’s existing overcrowding can be addressed by looking at rezoning, or redistricting – which the board approved last week.
All one need do is look at the classroom space available at adjacent elementary school attendance zones: primarily the recently-expanded South Mebane, with 160 empty seats. But even a more broad approach shows that also significantly under capacity (even with the revised definitions) is B. Everett Jordan (under by 104).
Of course, school boards absolutely hate to go through the controversies associated with redistricting to adjust attendance zones to relieve overcrowding. (They outsourced it this time to researchers at N.C. State.)
But that’s the most cost-effective method.
And lastly, school board members should dig into how the school system suddenly lost so many seats over the past few years; ABSS officials have redefined the capacity to shrink the capacity of the very same elementary school buildings that existed seven years ago by a whopping 1,119 students – or about the size of two elementary schools. (Is it any wonder that Dr. Fleming thinks the county now needs two new elementary schools?)
There are various ways to create the illusion of having crowded schools, and ABSS officials certainly know how to use most of them.
But we wish at least one school board member would exhibit a little curiosity, skepticism, or just plain objectivity to ask at least a few probing questions – not the least of which is why anyone should believe a company whose past projections have been so far off.
It’s one thing to just be off in a theoretical sense – when it doesn’t really matter.
But when the superintendent starts talking about a multi-million bond referendum for additional construction, that will ultimately cost taxpayers who inevitably must foot the bill, the firm’s track record and current methodology should certainly be examined more closely.
We certainly hope the county’s commissioners will take a more objective look at the numbers behind the outlandish projections for school growth and new schools – and, in particular, the firm’s track record of overstatement.
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