Plans Presented To Curtail Cherokee High School Overcrowding

CANTON, GA -- The Cherokee County School District is making some progress on its plans to address overcrowding at its oldest high school. School board members were briefed Thursday evening on meetings held to gather community feedback on what near-immediate plans the system can take to provide relief to Cherokee High School.

While the campus doesn’t meet the district's definition of “critically overcrowded” due to solutions already implemented, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Brian Hightower said he’s committed to asking the board to provide its blessing on a plan that would alleviate overcrowding beginning in the 2018-19 school year.

The first round of attendance focus group meetings in the Cherokee Innovation Zone were held earlier this month, and two follow up meetings will be held this week at the high school to provide more information to parent questions. Those meetings are set for 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 25 and Thursday, Oct. 26.

Three plans were reviewed with parents at those meetings, the details of which are posted online. A fourth possibility floated by Canton ES STEM Academy parents also will be examined at this week's meetings (SIGN UP: Get Patch's Daily Newsletter and Real Time News Alerts. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app).

Dr. Hightower said the district isn't enamored with any of these plans because "they affect students and staff who haven’t done anything other than keep waking up to go to school each day."

"No matter what plan we choose, it will be a change for some of our students and staff," he said. "What we’re tasked with is finding the plan that has the least negative impact on our programs, operations and budget."

The three plans presented by staff so far are:

• Expanding the high school to include the neighboring Canton ES STEM Academy campus; Canton ES STEM Academy students would be consolidated into Knox Elementary and R.M. Moore Elementary schools, with STEM programs added to both of those campuses and R.M. Moore retaining Title I services (while Knox will not see enough of a demographic shift to qualify as Title I, students in need will continue to receive extra services).
• Expanding Cherokee to include Canton ES STEM Academy; Canton ES STEM Academy students would move to the ACE Academy campus, the 30-year-old former Teasley Middle School building on Knox Bridge Highway); ACE Academy students move to the former Tippens Elementary School, a 30-plus-year-old building on Glenwood Street in Canton, which will need significant renovations before that move can occur).
• Splitting Cherokee High School, with ninth-graders moving to the ACE Academy campus and ACE Academy students relocating to the former Tippens building.

Under all three plans, no district staff would be reduced despite some potential consolidation, as the district makes new hires each year due to retirements and enrollment growth.

The fourth possibility suggested by some Canton parents also calls for Cherokee to expand to include Canton ES STEM Academy, with Canton students relocating to the ACE Academy campus. But under this plan, ACE Academy -- which serves students expelled from the district's traditional high schools, as well as some who choose the program for its “work-at-your-own-pace” schedule -- would share the Canton Elementary building with the Cherokee freshmen.

More than 2,600 students attend Cherokee High School, which opened after the merger of the Canton Independent School District and the Cherokee County School District, and absorbed students from the former Canton High School and Reinhardt Academy.

It held its first classes during the 1956-57 school year, its website states. In 1967, the third high school -- Ralph Bunche -- was consolidated into Cherokee High School. For comparison's sake, here's a breakdown of the student population of the district's six high schools, according to the system's annual inventory of school housing released Aug. 29:

• Cherokee High School: 2,674
• Creekview High School: 1,995
• Etowah High School: 2,421
• River Ridge High School: 1,809
• Sequoyah High School: 1,912
• Woodstock High School: 2,308

Dr. Hightower emphasized Thursday night that the Cherokee Innovation Zone has received a lion’s share of CCSD construction funding over the last 15 years, totaling $140 million, including construction of replacement Canton, Hasty, Knox, Liberty Elementary and Teasley Middle schools; a classroom addition at R.M. Moore and two rounds of improvements to Cherokee since 2002 that alone total nearly $15 million.

“We have not ignored the Cherokee zone in the past nor are we going to in the future,” Dr. Hightower said. “What we’re talking about now is a necessary stop-gap – we remain committed to building a new high school to serve north Cherokee. We now have the property to do it in Ball Ground or in Sutallee, and we also would love to find some land between Cherokee High and Woodstock. What we need is the $70-plus million to build the school, which due to aggressive school construction for the last 20 years to keep up with explosive growth, we won’t be able to borrow for another six years when our community renews the Education SPLOST.”

Dr. Hightower noted that, depending on the plan approved by the school board, there may be opportunities to renovate and expand portions of the Cherokee High School campus while it’s still occupied -- which can’t occur now due to the lack of available open space unused by portables or as parking for staff and students.

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