School Overcrowding Management Plans

Washoe County Ballot Question 1 would increase sales tax to repair or build schools in the county. Legally, the school district can't take a position on the issues, so it is launching a new campaign to plan for overcrowding with, or without the money.

For the past three weeks, 13 elementary schools have developed a School Overcrowding Management Plan (SOMP) that will be presented to district officials. We followed Lemmon Valley Elementary School (LVES) as it developed a SOMP after an informational meeting with parents. Richard Swanberg, Area Superintendent for Area 1, which covers Lemmon Valley, laid out the district's needs with a closer focus on LVES at a meeting September 7th.  

Two days later, parents from that meeting joined teachers, counselors and administrators for a tour of the school, "Well one of the things, is we just want a second set of eyes," says Swanberg. "Are we utilizing every space possible for classroom instruction?"

"We had differing opinions, very differing opinions," said Erin Lane, Principal at LVES but says they did eventually come to a consensus, "I think parent input was great that day. It was so great for them to walk through all of our classrooms. They were able to see K, actually Pre-K through 6th grade. So they were able to see just an array of classrooms, of team taught classrooms, of upper grades, and the primary grades as well. "

After the walk though the group met in the music room to discuss options, then took home suggestion forms to fill out and resubmit. Swanberg and Lane took those suggestions and developed the LVES SOMP to submit to the district. Principal Lane says her top solution is to rework spaces the school already has.

More team teaching in lower grades would put more kids in one room but fewer students per teacher. A team-taught class has up to 36 kids but with two teachers that is only 18 students for each teacher. Lane says there isn't enough space to do with grades 4, 5 and 6, because the students are too big to fit 36 of them in one classroom. The next recommendation for the school is to convert shared rooms, like the music and computer room into classrooms. For example, the computer lab could become a class room space, then each computer from the lab would get distributed into individual classrooms. The school has mobile laptop carts that would then move from class to class, so the computer lab would go to the class, rather than the class going to the lab. 

Lane says overcrowding is something she has to deal with and it wasn't as bad as projected this year, however it takes time away from other duties. She says focusing on lunch, bus and recess schedules is more difficult with more kids and teachers. The time she spends working on that could be spent in the classrooms.

"I'd love to be out in those classrooms and doing the things that we as principals need to be doing and supporting those teachers in that way," says Lane, "and really we are that instructional leader and being in those classrooms to do that and sometimes, I'm not able to do that."

Lemmon Valley has fewer students for the school year than projected, but it is still over capacity. Once a school reaches 120% capacity, it will automatically convert multi-track year-round. Principal Lane is confident her school's SOMP will work, but only for a year or two.

"We are projected potentially, I mean three years from now, we could go multi-track/year-round," says Lane "That is something that our teachers know, that our families know."