Local schools expecting enrollment gains as classes resume next week

As the county’s public schools prepare to begin classes on Monday, they still lack some of the teachers needed to fill certain positions. But there appears to be no shortage of students.

Pitt County Schools is one of a handful of public school districts in the state to report growth in enrollment in the last five years, according to a report from BEST NC (Business for Educational Success and Transformation NC). Although official enrollment figures are not released until a few weeks after the start of school, PCS is expecting about 24,700 students.

“We are one of six school districts in North Carolina that are growing very quickly,” Interim Superintendent Steve Lassiter said this week on PCS Connect, a podcast shared on the school district’s website.

Pitt County Schools reported record enrollment last fall at a time when overall enrollment at traditional public schools across the state was experiencing a decline. Average daily membership increased to 23,732, compared with 23,467 for the 2022-23 school year.

Growth is evident on campuses like that of Eastern Elementary, one of nine schools in Pitt County with student populations that exceed capacity. Principal Alison Setser has added nearly 100 students to the roll since she took the helm about a year and a half ago.

“I can’t get any more teachers; I don’t have the space,” Sester said in an interview at Thursday’s open house, as hundreds of students and families turned out to meet their new teachers. “I share my office. We’re very strategic in how we use space.”

The school added modular units to its campus last summer to make room for more students. One unit serves as a STEM classroom while another houses a new class for students with autism.

“It’s OK. We’ll find more desks; we’ll figure it out,” said Setser, who has embraced the growth, even adding the slogan “Here we grow again” to the back of new staff T-shirts this year. “It makes me happy that parents want to be here. We’re large and we’re booming, but we know our families and they know us.”

Eastern, which is in the J.H. Rose attendance area, has grown from 760 students to 842 since January 2023. But crowding is even more prevalent in the D.H. Conley and South Central attendance areas. According to a 2023 PCS report, five schools in Conley’s attendance area and three in South Central’s were above capacity.

“We’re continuing to grow in Pitt County,” Lassiter told The Daily Reflector in an interview last month. “We’re committed, as a school district, to keep up with that growth and to make sure that we let parents know that we’re aware in certain parts of the county we’ve got schools that are near that capacity level. We’re continuing to think about strategies and how we might address it.”

Pitt County Schools’ last student reassignment plan was implemented in the 2011-12 school year. For the last decade, the school district has relied on open enrollment to help bring balance to school populations.

Open enrollment allows students, who are traditionally assigned to schools based on the attendance area in which they live, to be reassigned by request to a participating school. No transportation is provided to students attending school outside the attendance area in which they live.

Eastern was an open-enrollment school when third-grader Miller Simerson started a few years ago. Although the school has been removed from the open enrollment list, students who already entered through open enrollment and their siblings are allowed to complete elementary school here.

“We are in the Wintergreen district, so if we had gone to Wintergreen it would have been even bigger,” his mother, Tiffanie Simerson explained, adding that several friends from her son’s day care attended Eastern. “We felt more comfortable coming here.”

Since 2013, the number of PCS open enrollment schools has grown from five to 25. Bethel School has been on the open enrollment list for more than a decade. The K-8 school, which has a capacity of about 480 students, has a student enrollment of about 220.

The small number was one of the things that prompted Scott and Alyssa Matthews to apply for open enrollment at Bethel for their daughter, Ryleigh, who will start kindergarten there next week.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people this is the better school,” Scott Matthews said as he attended open house. “I like that it’s going to go up to eighth grade so she doesn’t have to flip-flop schools.”

Matthews, who grew up attending a small, private school, is happy to make the extra 15-minute drive for his daughter to be in a classroom of only 10 kindergartners.

Principal Ashley Bell, who started at Bethel in 2023, said the school is seeing an influx of students coming through open enrollment.

“We are a community school,” she said. “We are public but we have the ability to keep the small classes. The beauty is we have the ability to really individualize and focus on individual students, not just when we talk about academics but mental health, behavior concerns.”

Parent Tricia Werkau said the size of the school is one of the things that prompted her to move into the district.

“They would not get the support they need at a bigger school without a lot more work,” she said. “They knew who we were because there are 200 kids here. I’m really pleased with the community that they’re trying to build here.”

Lassiter said recent industry expansion announcements are expected to increase population in the region and to bring additional enrollment to schools.

“Pitt County is growing and that’s an excellent thing,” he said. “It’s a great ‘problem’ that people are coming. They’re wanting to be in Pitt County.”