By John C. Stevenson
STAFF WRITER
Liberty residents have expressed some concerns regarding a plan to split the existing elementary-school attendance area into two pieces, with the railroad tracks that divide the town marking the attendance line between old and new elementary schools.
Chastain Road Elementary School is scheduled to open in the fall of 2011, and is expected to have a student body of around 500, roughly the same number of students who would remain at Liberty Elementary which, School District of Pickens County Superintendent Henry Hunt said, is currently the largest elementary school in the district.
“We looked at bus routing, and factors such as the number of students in each attendance area on free and reduced lunch, the number of students in each area that were minorities,” Hunt told an audience of about two dozen Monday night, many of them district employees. “You get two really equal attendance areas if you use that railroad line.”
Hunt said both schools are expected to open the 2011 school year with about 500 students in grades kindergarten through five. Students from both schools will feed into Liberty Middle in the sixth grade.
|
Advertisement
|
 |
Currently students at LES go through fourth grade, then move to fifth grade at the middle-school level. Some in the audience expressed concern at the change.
Lori Sampson, who said she has a child in kindergarten at Liberty Elementary, said she’d like to have separate facilities for students in 4-year-old kindergarten through second grade and third –through-fifth grades. “But I know that’s not a possibility,” she said after the meeting.
Liberty resident Terry Baker said he was concerned that dividing the town into northern and southern halves along the railroad track could have a “connotation.” However, Hunt pointed out the two areas would have very similar demographics.
Of the roughly 490 students who would attend LES, 247 would be on a free-lunch program, 55 would be on a reduced-lunch program, and 188 would be on full-pay, compared to 261, 55 and 160, respectively, at CRES.
Ethnic breakdowns would also be comparable at the two schools, Hunt said, with around 16 black students, 24 Hispanic students and 426 white students at LES, while at Chastain Road, the numbers would be 15, 17 and 424, respectively.
