LR5 looking at changing attendance lines, school structure as student population grows

In the past decade, school attendance in the Chapin and Irmo areas has flipped on its head.

Ten years ago, the Dutch Fork High School “cluster” was the largest of the three in Lexington-Richland 5, with 38% of enrolled students in schools compared to 36% for Irmo High School and just 25% for Chapin. This school year, those numbers are nearly reversed; the Chapin cluster now enrolls 39% of the district’s in-person students, versus 31% in Irmo and 29% in Dutch Fork.

That change has left the Lexington-Richland 5 school district considering how best to handle shifting attendance patterns across the district’s 22 schools. Last week, district Superintendent Akil Ross laid out a plan for how the fast-growing district can deal with shifting population patterns around the district.

One step will be to simplify the structure of the district. Currently, students go through intermediate schools that serve as a transition point between the traditional elementary and middle schools. CrossRoads Intermediate School takes students from both the Dutch Fork and Irmo attendance areas for a year before sending them back to their middle schools.

Ross’s proposal would streamline the attendance structure, doing away with the intermediate stage. The plan would also allow the district to accommodate a growing number of students by re-purposing existing school buildings instead of building new ones.

In the restructured district, CrossRoads would be turned into a new middle school alongside Dutch Fork and Irmo middle schools. Students from Leaphart and Seven Oaks Elementary would attend the new CrossRoads Middle, while Dutch Fork, H.E. Corley, Oak Pointe and River Springs Elementary will continue to send students to Dutch Fork Middle, and Irmo and Nursery Road Elementary students would graduate to Irmo Middle.

Harbison West students going forward would split between CrossRoads and Irmo depending on their attendance zones, with students living north of Interstate 26 going to CrossRoads and south of the interstate going to Irmo.

Meanwhile, Chapin Intermediate would turn into the new Chapin Middle School and take students from Chapin and Piney Woods elementary schools. The old Chapin Middle campus would become a new Spring Hill Middle School and take students from Lake Murray and Ballentine elementary schools, which would move to the Chapin cluster from the Dutch Fork cluster.

But the student body at Ballentine will change as well, Ross said, with a renewed attendance area for Ballentine to include more of the Chapin area, reducing population growth at the other three elementary schools. Some areas currently attending Ballentine would be redistricted into other Dutch Fork area elementary schools after the current crop of Ballentine students passes through.

Spring Hill High School would remain a magnet school under this proposal.

The plan would also create a new 3K-4K program for the Chapin area, hosted at one of the Chapin elementary schools.

That doesn’t mean Lexington-Richland 5 will completely avoid having to build any new facilities. Ross said the district’s alternative programs — the Academy for Success at Spring Hill High, the adult education program at Irmo High and the Five online program at Piney Woods — would have to move out of their current homes so that “every square foot” is turned over to students enrolled at those schools.

Instead, those programs would need to go into a purpose-built building or move into the current Dutch Fork Elementary School, necessitating the construction of a new elementary school, Ross said. The extra space at Spring Hill will create more room for a feeder program at Spring Hill Middle, lessening the strain on Chapin High without taking away spots in the magnet program for the Dutch Fork and Irmo areas.

The superintendent said he estimates about 200 students a year would move from Spring Hill Middle to Spring Hill High.

Ross said he welcomes community responses to the proposal at 5yearplan@lexrich5.org.