CONWAY, SC (WBTW)- The first day for Horry County Schools is tomorrow and the school district is seeing major growth.
Horry county schools are expected to grow by about 900 students every year. It’s mainly elementary schools that are near or at capacity causing the district to make policy changes.
Starting this school year, 20 schools are operating at 95 percent or above student capacity, and 70 percent of those schools are elementary schools.
“We are limiting transfers for those schools that are 95 percent or above capacity to help with that,” said Lisa Bourcier with Horry County Schools.
Which could make getting your kid to school difficult for some parents.
“Some parents live in Conway and work in Myrtle Beach, and prefer their children go to the Myrtle Beach schools because it’s easier for transportation, and those are some hardships that we have to look at when we consider these transfers as well,” said Bourcier.
This map shows where the most students in the county live. The district is seeing the most growth in Carolina Forest, St. James, Socastee, and North Myrtle Beach areas.
The school district is also feeling some growing pains with 157 modular units, some as temporary class rooms. Elementary schools in the county have the most modular units.
“We do have some schools that are pretty much land locked and the area that they currently are residing in and it’s hard to either expand those areas or add modulars,” said Bourcier.
One thing the school district said they aren’t changing is class sizes. Elementary school classes range from 21 to 25 kids per class, middle school 25, and high school 26 students per class.
Horry County Schools said they also look at how many babies are born. If they know there’s a high birth rate that year they already start planning that they’ll be in the school system in the next 4 or 5 years.
