A school system consultant says 3,000 more students will fill – and crowd – county’s schools by 2035; so which is it this time: accurate or exaggerated?
Alamance-Burlington school board members were told earlier this month by a Raleigh-based consultant to expect a 13.7 percent increase in enrollment over the next decade – or potentially 3,056 more students.
But this same consultant has conducted three earlier studies for ABSS – in 2013, 2015, and 2020 – and consistently overstated future enrollment for the entire school system, often by hundreds of students (see accompanying chart outlining forecast versus actual enrollment).
The report of future growth and potential overcrowding led ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming to suggest the school system may need to look at building a new elementary school and possibly a new middle school.
But how accurate are the consultant’s statistics and projections this time?
The latest enrollment and capacity study conducted for ABSS forecast a 13.7 percent increase in enrollment between the current school year through the 2034-35 school year.
Ongoing growth in the county had put one elementary school (Garrett) over capacity and four other elementary schools (Alexander Wilson, A.O., Eastlawn and Elon) near their stated capacities during the previous 2024-25 school year and in future school years, according to the latest enrollment and capacity forecast presented earlier this month.
Reports of overcrowding at Garrett Elementary School have been the subject of repeated complaints during numerous Mebane city council meetings.
The consultant has also concluded that enrollment at Southern Middle School (821 students) exceeded capacity (756 students) by 65 students during the previous 2024-25 school year and forecast overcrowding to continue at Southern Middle School every year during 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 2025 study.
Yet the 2020 and 2025 studies acknowledge the “graying” of Alamance County’s population, noting that the number of residents age 65 and older “have been on the rise since 2010.”
School board members were nevertheless told earlier this month that the “resident live birth rate” is a critical factor in forecasting future enrollments, because “a large share are going to become your kindergarteners five years down the line.”
However, live birth rates included in the latest study show that the number of children born to Alamance County residents had decreased by 70 (3.5 percent), from 1,958 resident live births in 2018 to 1,888 in 2023, based on figures presented to the school board.
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Unlike the previous ones, the latest study doesn’t include an “in-migration” trend line that would denote the number of school-age children who moved to Alamance County during that timeframe, between 2018 and 2023.
Instead, the consultant’s analysis focuses on industrial/commercial development; employment opportunities; roads and water/sewer infrastructure; low cost-of-living; and 121 residential developments that are either underway or proposed, all targeted for completion by 2035, and tend to drive population growth, a land use report included with the 2025 enrollment and capacity study.
The study, conducted by the Operations Research and Education Laboratory (OREd) at N.C. State University, projects that more than 3,000 new students will enroll in ABSS schools over the next decade due to ongoing development in the county, particularly 121 approved and/or pending residential developments that are targeted for completion by 2035.
Meanwhile, Fleming said two weeks ago that some overcrowding could potentially be addressed through redistricting, which he said he intends to discuss with the school board later this year. “I do think there’s some opportunities for a middle and elementary,” he added. “I do think there’s some opportunities to look at a new elementary school soon.”
School board member Seneca Rogers pointed out during the presentation of the 2025 study that the previous 2020 study had shown that enrollment at Garrett Elementary School “was not going to be over capacity at all.”
In fact, the 2020 study projected that enrollment at Garrett Elementary School would remain below capacity every year through 2029-30.
OREd chief program manager Thomas Dudley, who presented the2025 study to school board members, recalled that the previous study coincided with a “time in the history of school planning [when] there was so much uncertainty.”
Though there was no subsequent discussion of the enrollment and capacity study, Fleming said during the school board’s latest meeting Monday night that a separate facility needs survey, which all N.C. school systems are required to submit to the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI) every five years, and was conducted for ABSS by a different consulting firm in Greensboro will be presented at the board’s upcoming work session on September 9.
“It will be a big one – I have seen a preview of it,” the superintendent added.
2013 and 2015 enrollment and capacity projections
Two earlier studies projected that total enrollment would remain relatively static between 2014-15 (when ABSS was projected to enroll 22,642 students) and 2019-20, when enrollment was projected at 22,629 students (see accompanying chart).
The original 2013 study and the 2015 update concluded that enrollment was over or near capacity for eight of the 20 elementary schools; at or near capacity at two of the seven middle schools (Graham and Southern); and enrollment to be at or near capacity at four of the six high schools (Eastern, Southern, Western and Williams).
The ABSS administration and then-school board members were urged to consider consolidating elementary schools that had the smallest enrollments (E.M. Yoder, North Graham, Pleasant Grove, and Sylvan), which the consultants deemed to be the least energy efficient and would need facility upgrades. A subsequent recommendation by Harrison to close Pleasant Grove Elementary School was rejected later that year by the school board; and Pleasant Grove was renovated as part of the $150 million bond package that voters approved for ABSS in November 2018.
The consultants, which in addition to OREd researchers included an architect from SfL+a Architects of Raleigh, the same firm that designed the Career & Technical Education Center in Burlington that opened in 2012, also recommended in 2013 that ABSS do a separate study to determine whether an expansion or a new middle school needed to be built in order to meet enrollment projections at the middle school level.
Consultants with OREd have generally said that their studies were intended to guide ABSS officials in determining when existing schools were likely to be “out-of-capacity” and when new schools, or other remedies for school overcrowding, may be warranted.
The 2013 study and 2015 update by OREd also concluded that that five of the six high schools (Cummings, Eastern, Southern, Western, and Williams) were at or near their stated capacities. ABSS subsequently built a seventh high school, the $67 million Southeast High School funded by proceeds from the 2018 bond package that opened in August 2023.
School board members had also approved a high school redistricting plan in January 2017 that was to have taken effect simultaneously with the opening of the new high school. The original high school redistricting plan was scaled back in November 2022 and eliminated the conversion of Cummings and Graham from comprehensive high schools to specialty schools due to what then-superintendent Dr. Dain Butler attributed to tepid interest in attending either specialty school from ABSS students and families. Graham was to have been converted to a skilled trades academy for grades nine through 12; Cummings, to an arts academy for grades six through nine, under the January 2017 redistricting plan.
Holes in the 2020 study
The 2020 study, which was discussed during a single school board work session in mid-October 2020 and effectively shelved, had significant variations in the forecast, versus actual, enrollment figures for ABSS began during the 2020-21 school year and continued every school year through 2024-25.
For 2019-20 (the baseline school year for the 2020 study), ORED projected an enrollment of 22,629 students by the end of the second month of the school year; actual enrollment totaled 22,851 students at the end of the first month of school, meaning the study had underestimated enrollment for 2019-20 by 222 students.
For 2020-21, OREd projected that ABSS would have an enrollment of 22,770 students by the end of the second month of school, versus an actual enrollment of 21,480 students at the end of the first month of school. In other words, the 2020 study overestimated the school system’s enrollment by 1,290 students for 2020-21.
Several then-school board members had pressed OREd consultants who presented the 2020 study why they had failed to include the additional school capacity that was to be created by the construction of the seventh high school, Southeast; planned expansions at the six existing high schools (and two elementary schools) that were included in the2018 bond package voters; or the impact of the 2017 high school redistricting plan.
“We have approved redistricting plans that puts additional capacity in place,” then-school board member Bryan Feeley pointed out during the discussion (held entirely online via Zoom) in October 2020.
Actual enrollment declined by 774 students over the past decade
Overall, actual enrollment in ABSS has declined over the past decade, from 22,689 students at the end of the first month of the 2014-15 school year to 22,412 students at the end of the first month of 2024-25, based on ABSS enrollment reports, which include the Alamance-Burlington Early College housed at ACC, Alamance Virtual School, and Ray Street Academy that have no bearing on school capacity.
The consultant also overestimated enrollment by 669 students for the latest year that actual enrollment figures are available, the first month of the 2024-25 school year.
OREd projected ABSS would enroll 23,081 students by the end of the second month of school.
Actual enrollment totaled 22,412 students by the end of the first month of 2024-25, according to the school system’s monthly enrollment report.
The 2020 and 2025 study gave projected enrollment for the second month of each school year over a 10-year period; the 2013 study and its 2015 update gave projected enrollment for the first month of school. OREd didn’t explain why enrollment projections for the second month of school were used for the 2020 and 2025 studies.
2020 and 2025 studies included no analysis of private and charter school enrollment growth
The previous enrollment and capacity study, which OREd conducted for the school system at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, had failed to account for continuing growth in charter, private, and home schools that serve students in Alamance County.
The current 2025 study also makes no mention of the potential impact on ABSS from enrollment growth at the county’s private and charter schools.
For example, between 2019-20 and 2024-25, enrollment in Alamance County private schools increased by 69.4 percent; and enrollment in charter schools increased by 78.8 percent (see accompanying charts).
Though overall enrollment in home schools in Alamance County declined by 3.9 percent between 2019-20 and 2024-25, home school enrollment surged by 36.3 percent between from 2,649 home school students in 2020-21 to 3,610 students in 2022-23, coinciding with the Covid-19 and statewide school shutdown (see accompanying chart).
