Bluffton students and parents outraged over rezoning plan. Will the district change it?

A presentation from Beaufort County School District administrators Wednesday left Bluffton parents, teachers and students worried, frustrated and some even scared about the district’s new plan to address overcrowding over the next five years.

Questions about the district’s proposal to change school zoning assignments ran the gamut — from the potential psychological impacts on children to traffic congestion to the safety of mobile units.

The overwhelming concern, however, was the plan for Bluffton’s two high schools.

Many parents and students were astonished and confused that the district was proposing to shrink the student body at the less-crowded high school, which is in a slower-growing area of Bluffton, and further pack the already-overcrowded high school in the fastest-growing area of the town.

District staff defended the idea as the best starting point for addressing its main objectives, which were to balance demographics and create a scenario that would last for five years, using mobile classrooms to minimize future rezoning.

District spokesperson Jim Foster referred to the proposal as the “Plan B” to voters’ rejection of two bond referendums in recent years. The failure of the referendums has left the district without millions of dollars needed to build new and expand existing schools, particularly in Bluffton, which ranks among the fastest-expanding municipalities in South Carolina.

The last bond referendum, held in April, failed just months after three school district employees were subpoenaed in an FBI investigation connected to the construction of two Bluffton schools — May River High School and River Ridge Academy, both of which were millions of dollars over initial budgets.

This past August, the U.S. attorney’s office issued a fourth subpoena asking the district for information about former superintendent Jeff Moss, who oversaw the building of both schools.

Wednesday’s meeting at May River High was one of three Bluffton town halls held by the district to present the plan to community members.

The plan would not only add 82 mobile classrooms spread out among four Bluffton schools over the next five years but also alter school zoning assignments for the 2019-20 school year — an idea that was rejected by the school board for this school year after backlash from parents.

After the first 10 days of this school year, May River High School was at 98 percent capacity while Bluffton High was at 85 percent, according to district enrollment data. River Ridge Academy and Pritchardville Elementary School — the two most crowded schools in the district — were at 107 percent and 97 percent capacity respectively.

The district’s plan, as it is currently laid out, would reduce Bluffton High’s population by about 200 students — bringing it to 70 percent capacity. May River High would then expand to 104 percent capacity. Mobile units would be added to May River to accommodate the overcrowding.

Ashley Parlagreco, a Bluffton High teacher and a mother of two students in the district, called the plan “mind-boggling.”

Parlagreco said that spending money on mobile units at May River High while Bluffton High was only 70 percent full seemed “illogical.”

“We already do not have trust from the taxpayers, there’s already been a problem with transparency, so let’s not go down that road again,” she said. “Let’s propose a plan that people can buy into. If we see 70 and 104, we’re not buying into it.”

Parlagraco asked district administrators to host more town halls before making a final decision because “this looks scary,” she said.

‘We like our diversity’

When looking at the racial makeup of Bluffton and May River high schools, the two schools are clearly unbalanced — a topic that sparked concerns from parents after the opening of May River High three years ago.

Bluffton High comprises 41 percent white students, 40 percent Hispanics, 14 percent blacks, 2 percent Asians and 3 percent of students from other racial categories, according to the district’s 45-day enrollment numbers from the 2017-18 school year.

May River, on the other hand, is composed of 58 percent white students, 24 percent Hispanics, 14 percent blacks, 1 percent Asian and 3 percent of students from other racial categories, according to the data.

The district’s five-year plan “attempted to try to balance that more,” according to Robert Oetting, the district’s chief operations officer.

For example, the plan would send students who live in the Alljoy area of Bluffton all the way across town, past Bluffton High, to May River.

When asked how the district made those rezoning decisions, Oetting said it was due to demographics.

Yet, parents and students overwhelming spoke out Wednesday night in protest of changing the demographics to Bluffton High.

Kevin Sandusky, chairman of the School Improvement Council for Bluffton High, urged the district not to change the makeup of the school at all.

“We are a high-performing, ethnically diverse school and wish to remain this way,” Sandusky said. “... If you drop us down to 70 percent, those students that remain are not going to have the same opportunities that they had previously.”

A half a dozen Bluffton High students in attendance also spoke up to voice their opposition to the proposed rezoning and demographic shifts. Their chief concern was the potential loss of academic programs, clubs or sports teams.

“When you reduce the pool of beautiful, diverse minds at our school, you destroy everything we’ve built for last three years since the split,” said Trevor Rizzo, a senior at Bluffton High.

Following the meeting, Oetting said that it was clear from those at the meeting that balancing out the demographics was not an important factor to parents and students for rezoning.

Therefore, if the district keeps the high schools the way they are made up demographically, Oetting said less redistricting at the high school level will be necessary.

Oetting said administrators heard parents and students “loud and clear” that they’d like the two high schools to stay as close to where they are now as possible and will be taken into consideration as new refined plans are proposed.

What happens next?

The district’s five-year mobile plan was set in motion this summer when a six-classroom mobile was added to Pritchardville Elementary School and an eight-classroom mobile was added to River Ridge Academy.

Despite the additional mobiles, both schools are still at or above 97 percent capacity, according to district enrollment numbers after 10 days into the 2018-19 school year.

By 2021, all of the Bluffton schools will be, on average, at 100 percent capacity, district estimates state.

Oetting said at Wednesday’s meeting that the earliest the district would hold a referendum would be November 2019.

If a referendum passed then, the earliest the district could complete the construction of a new school would be for the start of the 2021-2022 school year, according to Oetting.

In the meantime, the district’s five-year plan uses mobiles as the primary option for addressing overcrowding.

The plan includes building 32 mobile classrooms at May River High School, 20 at H.E. McCracken Middle School and 16 at MC Riley Elementary School by the start of the 2022-23 school year, as well as the six already built at Pritchardville Elementary School and the eight built at River Ridge Academy.

The district already received board approval to build an eight-classroom mobile unit at May River High School this summer.

When the mobile plan was first presented to the school board in July, district staff told the board that each mobile classroom would cost about $120,000 for a total $9.8 million.

On Wednesday, Oetting said that cost estimate has since risen due to increasing construction costs and new tariffs, but he could not provide a new total estimate.

As a next step, Oetting and his team will give the school board a presentation Oct. 2 with feedback from the public as well as staff recommendations.

After hearing from the school board, they will come up with three new rezoning options and present those to the board on Oct. 16.

District staff hopes to obtain approval for the student reassignment plan in November.

In the meantime, students like Grayson Short, a junior at Bluffton High, express years of frustration as they again wait to see if they will be forced to start at a new school next year.

“It’s disheartening to see students constantly shifted back and forth to where they don’t actually feel like they have a school that they belong to,” Short said after Wednesday’s meeting. “It’s all just temporary placement until they graduate.”

This story was originally published September 27, 2018 at 5:56 PM.