Crowded Classrooms: Stokes commissioners take first steps to relieve strain of growth in its elementary schools

KING

The Stokes County commissioners authorized the school board yesterday to buy land for a new elementary school to relieve overcrowding at King and Mount Olive elementary schools.

With chairman Leon Inman recusing himself, the four other commissioners voted unanimously to provide $1.3 million to buy 62 acres on N.C. 66 south of Mountain View Road. The parcel is big enough for the school system to build another school there in coming years.

The five commissioners also voted unanimously to provide $1.04 million to buy pods for students at Nancy Reynolds Elementary School to use during the 2009-10 school year while the school is being renovated or replaced. The two 10-pod units will be set up at Pinnacle Elementary School.

Bill Hart, the chairman of the Stokes County Board of Education, said he was pleased.

"It allows us to start doing some of the things that we have to do," Hart said.

Superintendent Stewart Hobbs said, "I think we're on our way."

The Nancy Reynolds project is at the top of the school board's capital-improvements list.

Second on the list is a new elementary school in the King area. Although the commissioners approved the money for land and pods, they have not yet provided the rest of the money for the projects, which could total about $25 million.

Stokes County has 11 elementary schools. The overcrowding problem at King and Mount Olive is severe. King has 680 students in buildings built in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s to house a total of 455 students. Mount Olive has 740 students at a school that was built in 1977 to house 415 students.

The southwestern part of Stokes County is growing, so chances are that crowding will get worse at both schools until something is done. At the end of the 2007-08 school year, King had 580 students. When school started this year, it had 680.

"I picked up 100 kids," said Shannon Boles, the principal at King.

At Mount Olive, some of the extra students are squeezed into the main building, but more than a third of the school's students are in 17 mobile units. That includes all of the fifth-graders, as well as two classes each of the second, third and fourth grades, and specialty classes such as music and speech.

"The 261 students in the mobile units would be the third-largest elementary school we have," said David Hicks, the principal at Mount Olive.

That "school" has no cafeteria, though, so students in the mobile units troop into the main building no matter the weather.

"It if rains, they are going to get wet," Hicks said.

To handle all the students, the cafeteria serves food from 10:50 a.m. to 1 p.m. Parent Kelly Hundley said that one year, her daughter ate so early that she was ravenous by the time she came home each day.

Safety also is an issue at Mount Olive. Woods that are not part of school property are just across a driveway from one mobile unit. Although the doors to the mobile units are locked, Hicks and teachers would like more of a buffer.

As fifth-grade teacher Shannon Whitt told Stokes County commissioners at a recent meeting, "Anyone could come out of the woods at any time."

Security could also be an issue at King. The 1970s-era building was built when open classrooms were in vogue. Much of the building is still open, and classrooms don't have doors that can be locked should the students need to be secured. (Mount Olive was also built with an open-classroom plan but walls and doors were added later.)

King also has to have an extended lunch period. Lunch there goes from 11 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. At King, bathrooms are a particular problem. In one building, there is only one boys bathroom and one girls bathroom for 225 students.

"They have to stand in line out here (in the hall), and that's losing instructional times," Boles said.

The six mobile units -- a seventh is in the process of being installed -- have no bathrooms at all, so students in them have to go as a group to the gym to use the bathrooms there.

King is so crowded that a teacher who tutors individual students works in a "classroom" made by partitioning off part of a hallway with bookcases, and the parent-teacher organization has no permanent place to set up the store where students who earn points by reading can buy prizes.

"We have to have it out in the hall," said Cindy McGee, the organization president. "It is crowded everywhere. They real­ly need another school."

■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.