BY SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
ABOUT THE SERIES
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In a four-day series this week, Enquirer reporter Saundra Amrhein, who covers Union Township, will examine the pressure on police, schools, the fire department and parks.
Tuesday: Union Township's 58-member police force often finds itself running from call to call without much time for community police work. While the department expands its force, it struggles to hire people quickly enough.
TODAY: The Lakota Local School District is bursting at the seams with 14,000 children enrolled in its schools. The district is forced to find creative solutions to handle crowding, including portable classrooms. Are students being affected?
Thursday: Union Township Fire Department owns two ladder trucks that can no longer reach to the top of buildings that have gone up in West Chester. Other problems include outdated equipment and the painstaking effort to find fire volunteers. How is fire protection affected?
Friday: Union Township park and recreation facilities have not kept pace with the booming growth. What does it mean to users of the park system?
How do you feel about this issue? Share your comments about growth in West Chester with Saundra Amrhein. Call 860-7119 or send a fax to 860-5190.
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UNION TOWNSHIP -- For a year, Staci Hathaway wheeled her classroom around on a cart. The Hopewell Elementary School teacher would pack up her art and music supplies each day and take them to and from her first-, second- and third-graders.
Because there was no classroom to hold them, Ms. Hathaway and two other teachers shuttled from room to room.
"You don't have a place to call home; you don't have a place to store your belongings," said Ms. Hathaway, who now has her own classroom as a fourth-grade teacher. "We had a little closet for the three of us, but that had to be turned into another room because of the growth."
At more than 1,000 students, Hopewell Elementary rivals the size of some Cincinnati public high schools, such as Taft High School (1,050 students) and the School for Creative and Performing Arts (950 students from grades 4-12).
It also reveals the strain on the Lakota Local School District caused by booming growth in West Chester.
In the past 10 years, the school district has built 10 school buildings -- including two high schools last fall -- and invested in 35 building expansions.
During that same time, the student population almost doubled to about 14,000 for the upcoming school year.
Despite the breakneck growth, the district has on average been able to keep the teacher-student ratio under or near its goal of 1-to-25 for the higher grades and less for the elementary levels. Doing so has meant hiring more teachers and personnel, even as the buildings ran out of room to house them.
About 55 teacher positions will be added this fall, while 77 were added last year and 41 the year before.
Helping to pay for this was a supportive community that passed 11 money issues on the ballot since 1988.
That option is closed for the next two years.
"We made a commitment to the community not to go back to a levy or a bond issue this century," said Superintendent Kathleen Klink. "It's a big unknown what happens next fiscal year."
To get by without building more schools until after the turn of the century, the district is resorting to holding classes in school basements and erecting portable classrooms.
In the fall, there will be 21 portables at the schools, two more than now, for a total of 40 classrooms, said Larry Glass, administrative assistant for special projects.
Hopewell Elementary and Cherokee Elementary will get one new portable each.
Aside from buildings, other problems pop up throughout the district because of the growth.
Last fall, the schools faced a shortage of bus drivers. The district offered $1,000 bonuses for new drivers and $500 bonuses to current drivers who referred people to the job, said Dick Camp, director of support services.
Lakota wound up with a net increase of between 15 and 20 drivers, putting it back on track for this fall, he said.
To combat problems caused by the growth, drastic changes are needed, parents and school officials say.
The Lakota Advisory Commission has begun researching grade reconfigurations and other plans that will be presented to the public for discussion and school board approval over the next year, said chairwoman Heather Chaney.
The options include:
Building another elementary school.
Joining the freshmen with the high schools, which would open the Lakota Freshman School as a fourth junior high school and put sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders together.
Placing kindergarten through second grade in the same building.
Buying land for a third high school, an idea already unpopular with the public, Ms. Chaney said.
As a parent of two teen-agers and resident of West Chester for 20 years, Ms. Chaney has felt the growth firsthand.
"My son went to four elementary schools because of redistricting," she said.
The change was made easier because all the neighborhood children were moved together and maintained their friendships, she said. Still, Ms. Chaney is happy the district is taking action while there's some breathing room.
"I'm glad we're going to look at this now," she said.
Dizzying growth in West Chester over the past 20 years has turned farmland into parking lots and subdivisions.
Estimates show the population has soared from 23,553 in 1980 to 55,560 this year. Public services have felt the strain.
