How many Bluffton students will have to change schools next year? Here’s the district’s new plan
Students at Bluffton High School who were worried about Beaufort County School District’s plan to move them to the more crowded May River High School beginning next year can rest easy.
The district’s revised 2019-20 rezoning plan to relieve overcrowding in Bluffton and Hilton Head Island schools won’t change the map for Bluffton and May River high schools.
However, the plan would still move approximately 740 Bluffton students starting next year, including more than 130 students who live in Moss Creek, The Gatherings and Buckingham Landing, which are currently zoned for Hilton Head schools.
The idea to rezone Bluffton students had previously been rejected by the Beaufort County Board of Education for this school year after backlash from parents.
The district’s rezoning plan has been referred to multiple administrators as the district’s “Plan B” to voters’ rejection of two bond referendums in recent years that left the district without millions of dollars needed to built new and expand existing schools in Bluffton.
After hearing from Bluffton students, parents and teachers at town hall meetings last month, district administrators presented the Beaufort County Board of Education with its latest proposal for student reassignments Tuesday night.
According to the plan, approximately 475 elementary school students, 220 middle school students and 40 high school students will be moved from one school to another.
But, because the district’s revised proposal covers growth through the 2021-22 school year instead of 2022-23, the new plan would rezone fewer than half the number of students originally planned and require the purchase of 14 fewer mobile classrooms.
When staff presented the revised plan to the Beaufort County Board of Education on Tuesday, board members did not ask for any significant changes aside from one.
JoAnn Orischak, who represents the southern end of Hilton Head, made a motion to allow students who currently reside in three Bluffton neighborhoods close to the bridge onto Hilton Head to continue to attend schools on the island.
Under the district’s current zoning assignments, the approximately 130 students who live in Moss Creek, Buckingham Landing and The Gatherings attend Hilton Head schools. The new rezoning plan, however, would send those students to Bluffton High School, Bluffton Middle School and M.C. Riley Elementary School.
Orischak made the motion for staff to present the board with another rezoning plan that would “grandfather in” all of the students — about 130 students between kindergarten to 12th grade — who live in those neighborhoods.
The motion passed 5-3, with board members Cynthia Gregory-Smalls, Earl Campbell and Bill Payne voting against it.
The grandfather clause would allow current students who live in those neighborhoods to continue to attend Hilton Head schools but require any new students in those areas to attend the Bluffton schools. Buses would only take students to the Bluffton schools, leaving parents of the grandfathered-in students to arrange for transportation to Hilton Head.
Orischak said she made the motion because she felt like it was the “least disruptive option” for students and because it “wouldn’t make sense to add a hundred something students to already crowded schools.”
Still, Orischak said she understands why the district should draw the attendance line at the bridge going forward.
“If we keep allowing more and more students to go to Hilton Head and keep that bloated attendance zone, either we’ll have to add mobiles or expand buildings... And that Hilton Head campus is so cramped already I don’t know about any new construction,” she said.
Three of the five Hilton Head schools — Hilton Head Island Early Childhood Center and Hilton Head Island middle and high schools — are all above 100 percent programmatic capacity, which not only takes into account the number of open classrooms but also how they are used. The building capacity at the three schools are each at or above 90 percent.
Robert Oetting, the district’s chief operations officer, said Wednesday that moving those students who live over the bridge in Bluffton was the easiest way to address the overcrowding at the Hilton Head schools.
“Hilton head schools are definitely more crowded than the schools these children would be going to,” Oetting said.
Oetting and his team will be presented another revised plan to the school board at its next meeting on Nov. 13. The school district does not have plans to hold any more town hall meetings before making a decision on its rezoning plan.
This story was originally published October 17, 2018 at 5:02 PM.