The Horry County Board of Education voted Monday night to approve attendance lines for the new River Oaks Elementary School, which serves the Carolina Forest area.
The school is slated to open for the Fall 2012 school year.
More than 100 Carolina Forest Elementary students, living in an area southwest of Highways 501 and 31, will be moved to the new school, and more than 450 students from Ocean Bay Elementary living in an area bordered by Highway 31, Burcale Road, and the Intracoastal Waterway will also move to River Oaks Elementary.
In 2008, district staff began the process of meeting with communities around Horry County to discuss the possible needs for the next building program, according to Horry County School's website. In the spring of 2009, the district began discussing plans to build a new elementary school in the Carolina Forest Area. Site selection proceeded throughout the spring and summer of 2010. It was during this time the district says they began having preliminary discussions regarding potential new attendance lines. The school district says they held meetings with advisory board groups, district staff and board members to discuss the plans about the attendance area.
The Horry County Board of Education is also approved a new optimization plan for relieving overcrowded schools.
They have been discussing possible plans for relieving overcrowding schools since Spring 2011, including some of the schools in Carolina Forest. NewsChannel 15 has been following this story since the school board began meeting on possible rezoning in April.
The board approved a three prong approach as proposed my district officials. The plan was first discussed an October 10th workshop.
The first part of the approach consists of optimizing space at middle and high schools.
The second part includes things like adding new programs or activities, for example a 60 student orchestra, to attract students to attend the school.
The final part of the approach includes realigning students. That decision would come from a list of priorities, which could grow under the proposal passed Monday night.
The proposal lists the following possible board priorities:
- · Utilize empty classrooms
- · Optimized enrollment (enrollment/capacity %)
- · Demographic balance (Socioeconomics, race, etc.)
- · Community integrity
- · Configuration integrity (grade-level structures)
- · Location and distance to school
- · Costs (busing, etc.)
- · Natural boundaries
- · Student achievement,
- · Feeder system integrity
- · Transfer policy
About 15 percent of the schools in the district are above capacity. Some of those are in the Carolina Forest area, which has had a population boom over the past few years.
An initial proposal suggested sending a majority of kids who complete Carolina Forest Elementary to Black Water Middle School instead of Ocean Bay Middle School starting in the 2012-2013 school year. That upset many members of the Carolina Forest Civic Association. They have been lobbying the board since this summer, and one member has created a Facebook group with more than 160 members.
