BY CHRISTINE WOLFF and MIRIAM SMITH
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A coal room houses a kindergarten. A storage room is a reading classroom. Cafeterias are art rooms. And districts face the constant need to build as enrollment in Tristate suburban schools soars.
Meanwhile, student numbers continue to drop in many urban districts, where staff cuts leave computer labs locked and administrators deal with school buildings that are, in some cases, 55 years old.
The enrollment numbers charting these surges and drops are being reported now to state education departments where they become the crucial basis for state funding for this school year.
A Cincinnati Enquirer analysis of enrollment figures for the 75 public school districts in the three-state, 13-county metropolitan area shows Mason had the largest growth spurt in a year. The Warren County district grew by 580 students while Cincinnati Public Schools reported 488 fewer children in its classrooms.
Loveland Schools has had the greatest growth over the last five years. And Newport lost nearly 20% of its students over the same period.
Nationally, 52.7 million students attend public and private schools this school year - 500,000 more children than last school year and a record high for the second year in a row. Many of those children study in suburban classrooms - 30 percent, as of the 1996-97 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
"We need to build a school every two years to keep up," said Bryan Blavatt, superintendent of Boone County, Ky., schools, which opened $9 million Erpenbeck Elementary School this year with 700 students.
"The reality is that with the opening of Erpenbeck we are, for the first time, pretty much under capacity at each one of the elementaries," Mr. Blavatt said. "With the growth the way it is, we will be over capacity starting in September."
Growth is nothing new to Mike Faulkner, a lifelong Lebanon resident.
Mr. Faulkner, 44, who has two children in the Lebanon City Schools, expects the suburban growth to continue to spill into this Warren County city.
"If you look . . . the whole (Interstate) 71 corridor is untapped for commercial and industrial uses, I just think the potential's unlimited," he said. "When people talk about growth, I don't think it's really hit yet."
"I think right now they're doing a good job bringing in teachers," he said, adding that the challenge is to continue to attract high quality teachers as the district swells.
A sustained long-term enrollment decline for Cincinnati - the 79-school district serving the nation's 49th largest city in population - creates situations such as the one at Peoples Middle School, where 440 students attend classes in a building designed for more than 1,000. A computer lab sits empty at Peoples, screens blank and keyboards locked away because the school has no one to teach computer classes.
In Newport, Roger Von Strohe, director of pupil personnel said that since 1995 the district has been losing about 100 students a year.
"We are declining. But we're an inner city school and that's part of the trend," he said.
The ebb and flow of enrollment numbers in Tristate schools follows national patterns: Big cities - and even smaller ones with declining cores - see annual drops in the number of students, while the student population climbs in suburban districts.
The upward swing is focused in the suburbs of bigger cities, according to information from the U.S. Department of Education.
The national record-high number of children in classrooms today reflects an increase in the birth rate that peaked in 1990. The record numbers probably will continue another eight years as these children move through the grades, until reaching an estimated 54.5 million in public and private schools in 2006, said Vance Grant, a specialist in education statistics at the U.D. Department of Education.
"This is a baby boom echo," Mr. Grant said. "The birth rate after the mid-70s started to zoom . . . with 4,148,000 babies born in 1990, the highest in a number of years."
From sleepy to sprawling
It's the fifth largest employer in a suburban city exploding with growth.
It has a $23 million budget, 574 employees and a transportation fleet that traveled more than half a million miles last year.
Welcome to the state's fourth-fastest growing school district, which has seen its enrollment more than double in the last nine years.
Administrators with the Mason City Schools - like other suburban districts in the Tristate - are trying to keep pace with skyrocketing growth.
Outlying districts like Mason and Lakota Local are opening new buildings, hiring more staff and trying to maintain academic standards with the crush of suburban growth.
"We've gone from a sleepy little rural community to a sprawling, rapidly growing suburb that has a very well-respected school system," said Mason Superintendent Kevin Bright.
The student explosion can be tracked from Boone County, the second fastest-growing county in Kentucky, across the river and north on I-71, to booming Warren County, the second-fastest growing county in Ohio.
"Yes, there is a great deal of suburban growth compared with inner-city growth or rural growth," said LeeAnne Rogers, a spokeswoman with Ohio Department of Education. "Overall, we're seeing growth in Ohio schools. It's not as great a growth rate as perhaps other states are facing . . . but we are seeing growth, which raises questions about teacher availability, buildings, and do we have enough room for these students."
Especially in fast-growing districts like Mason, Lakota Local and Boone County Schools, where officials were discussing the need for more buildings even as they opened new schools.
"We're OK as far as available space for the next two to three years. Beyond that, it looks like it's going to get cramped again," Mr. Bright said.
"Growth will continue here. I won't speculate if it's by 500 or 600 a year. It's still a pretty healthy number," said Lakota Local Superintendent Kathleen Klink.
She attributes the district's enrollment increase to new housing construction, the opening of two new high schools last year, the district's reputation for quality schools and the opening of the Union Centre Boulevard interchange on I-75.
The district serves the fast-growing area of Liberty and Union townships in Butler County and was the eighth-fastest growing district in Ohio over a nine-year period.
Once Lakota East and West opened last fall, school officials noticed fewer students were transferring to private and parochial schools.
"We used to lose students who left the schools at the end of eighth grade. That seemed to be when they transferred to private or parochial schools," Mrs. Klink said. "That trend has shifted since we opened two new high schools. We're not seeing that."
Mrs. Klink believes that in some of the older, more established neighborhoods in the district, elderly couples who move are being replaced by families with young children.
Planning for the crush of students has become a priority in these districts.
"Our (Mason) board of education has really helped us look at the future; what we need to take into consideration to avoid putting in modular units and staying ahead of the growth curve," Mr. Bright said.
In Lebanon, officials project if growth continues at the current rate the district will grow from about 4,400 students to 7,492 in 2007-2008. Another projection anticipates the district will more than double to 10,222 in the same time period if the pace of growth picks up.
In Kentucky's Boone County Schools, Superintendent Bryan Blavatt already is predicting the need for another school in 2000 even though the district opened a new elementary school this fall. Right now the bulge is at the elementary level, with room to wiggle, but not much.
Mr. Blavatt said his district does have the advantage of being able to build additions to older schools like New Haven and Burlington elementary schools.
"But we don't have time to catch our breath," he said.
Running out of space
Space is at a premium in some growth districts.
At Conner Middle School in Hebron, Ky., serving lunch begins at 10:30 a.m. and it takes three hours to get everyone fed.
Teachers trundle carts loaded with art supplies from room to room at Three River's Meredith Hitchens Elementary School in Addyston.
A former coal storage room there is being used for kindergarten, and music classes are taught on the stage in the school gym.
"The art teacher plans what she wants to do and that morning she puts all the supplies she will need on the cart," said Principal Don Larrick.
"We had one hallway that had an open area at the end of it. We closed it and made a reading room out of it," he said.
And some students at Lebanon's Donovan Intermediate School in Warren County have their music class in a storage room.
There's also no room for art class, so fourth- and fifth-grade students color in the cafeteria.
Amy Brewer, an art teacher at Donovan Intermediate, said she has to juggle teaching time with lunch schedules.
"I have no sink. I have to teach in between lunch," Mrs. Brewer said. "Needless to say, it's been a challenge. This is my art space." Educators wonder where they'll put students if Lebanon, the state's 25th-fastest growing district over the last nine years, continues to grow at the same pace.
"There's just no more space to put kids," said Donovan Principal
Terri Tribbe. "We've gotten as creative as we can with the space we have. Our class sizes will just get larger."
While fueled by new families moving into a district, climbing student numbers also can cause some newcomers to turn away, said Roger Effron, a former Cincinnati educator who now runs a consulting business that helps match parents with school districts and helps districts pass tax levies.
A district's stability, Mr. Effron said, often is an important matter for families. For them, he usually recommends slower-growing districts, such as Hamilton County's Mariemont, Sycamore, Madeira and Winton Woods.
"They have an identity. You know what you get and what you will get," Mr. Effron said. "Many of the districts outside I-275 are going through adolescence. They're not sure how they're going to go. They've not got an identity yet. They're getting there, but not yet."
The "emerging districts," such as Butler County's Lakota and Warren County's Little Miami and Kings are in transition, he said, with much of the focus on dealing with the growth.
Quality control, too, can suffer when growth comes too quickly, Mr. Effron said. Officials in some growing districts say they can't hire as many experienced teachers now because it's too costly to fill so many openings with higher salaries.
"In one district north of 275, a superintendent told me he used to interview every teacher hired. Now, with 40-50 hirings a year, he can't do that," he said.
In Mason, district officials have hired more than half of its teaching staff over the last three years. This creates a demand for recruitment and training, so much so that the district hired a human resources director this fall.
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"It's a real challenge to get the very best teachers we can possibly get, then get the experienced teachers to assist the new teachers when they come in," Mr. Bright said.
At Springboro, a new high school opened its doors this fall and a newly renovated elementary school is expected to open next year.
But now officials wonder how they'll staff the renovated elementary school - which used to be the junior high building and has been shut down for a yearlong renovation - since an operating levy to hire more staff failed this month.
"We try to be planning-oriented and hopefully we look to the future in a way that we should so that it's in the best interest of community, to be proactive in dealing with growth," Superintendent Gary Meier said.
The greatest concern for a superintendent in a growing district is trying to keep ahead of the growth, said Michael Cline, superintendent of the Loveland City School District, which passed a $32 million bond issue this month to build a new school and renovate existing schools. Loveland's enrollment has grown by 18% over the last five years.
"You have to work so far in advance. It takes a year and a half to get a building. If people don't see the need, because you're looking ahead, they say, 'you don't need (a tax increase,)' " Mr. Cline said.
Loveland officials, for one, are "happy to see the end of growth," Mr. Cline said. A study of the district's families and the amount of land available for more houses indicates that the growth will level out by 2007, he said.
"I'm not sure all school districts can say that."
Bernie Mixon, Andrea Tortora, Dana DiFilippo and contributor Sue Kiesewetter contributed to this report.
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