Wake County’s growth has slowed. Why that might mean changes at two year-round schools.

Two northern Wake County year-round middle schools could switch to a traditional calendar as soon as 2025 because of not having enough students.

The Wake County school system is looking at converting Pine Hollow Middle in northwest Raleigh and Rolesville Middle to either a traditional calendar or a track 4 only year-round calendar. The reason, school administrators say, is the district can’t afford to continue funding both under-enrolled schools on the multi-track year-round calendar.

“Operating multi-track year-round schools at such a low level puts a lot of strain on the district in order to fund the additional positions that are not earned,” Assistant Superintendent Glenn Carrozza told the school board’s facilities committee in June.

Carrozza will brief the full school board on the calendar conversion proposal in July.

The board could approve the calendar change this summer to give families more time to prepare for a switch in the 2025-26 school year.

Benefits of multi-track calendar

Wake operate 37 schools on a multi-track year-round calendar. This means students are split into four groups, or tracks. Each track operates on its own schedule that includes short breaks throughout the school year instead of a long summer break.

The tracks rotate on a schedule of three tracks in class and one on break at all times. This calendar allows a school to increase its capacity by 25%.

The multi-track year-round calendar helped Wake deal with the rapid growth that occurred in the 2000s and 2010s. But growth has slowed and Wake’s enrollment is below pre-pandemic levels .

Carrozza says the multi-track calendar is still needed at elementary schools because Wake lost 9,000 seats when state lawmakers reduced K-3 class sizes. But the need isn’t as dire at middle schools, especially around Pine Hollow and Rolesville, where nearby middle schools are not overcrowded.

“As you look at our long-term projected growth, we do not need multi-track year-round or capacity seats that are available to these families in this area long-term,” Carrozza said.

Under-enrolled middle schools

Rolesville Middle is projected to have 883 students this fall on a campus that can hold 1,664 students on a multi-track calendar. Pine Hollow Middle is in a similar situation. It’s projected to only be at 64% of its capacity this fall.

Enrollment totals matter because schools get funding for teachers based on how many students they have.

“When the enrollment is low, they don’t earn enough teachers to run all of the classes that they need to run,” Carrozza said.

The district has historically provided additional funding to help under-enrolled schools hire enough teachers.

“We’re just at the point where we can’t afford to continue to fund the calendar just for choice,” Carrozza said.

Calendar alignment for families

There are two options on the table for calendar conversion.

One option is the traditional calendar used at most schools. Classes begin in late August and end in early June.

The other option is the track 4 calendar in which classes run from late July to late June. All the students at the school would follow the same year-round calendar in that option.

Wake has been surveying the Pine Hollow and Rolesville Middle parents about the proposed change.

Carrozza said families with both middle school and high school students prefer switching to the traditional calendar because siblings would be on the same schedule.

But Carrozza said families that have both elementary and middle school children prefer track 4 because it’s closer to the multi-track calendar used at the elementary schools.

Some families have asked about also converting the elementary schools to track 4. But Carrozza said they need the extra elementary school seats from the multi-track calendar.

If they switch the middle schools to track 4, Carrozza said they won’t guarantee that families will have siblings on the same track in elementary and middle school. He said there aren’t enough track 4 elementary school seats to accommodate the younger siblings.

“There are no easy answers to this,” Carrozza said.