Public school enrollment up

The numbers keep climbing at the Sevier County schools and the first day returns showed that the projections were right, as the school systems student population grew by another 2% above last year. A year ago the numbers went up by a similar amount according to figures provided by the school system. The county has put tens of millions of dollars into new schools and expanding existing schools, but they are still barely keeping pace in some areas. The system has utilized every approved resource it has available to accommodate students. Temporary classrooms have been employed at some schools. Several schools have new classroom additions this year with several more expected to be ready for next year. The system is also employing the “floating teacher” concept at multiple schools. The teacher has an office/storage area for their materials and rolls them on a cart to an unused classroom for each class. These floaters can end up in three to four different rooms through the course of a day. The rooms they float to are of teachers who have planning that period and have no students. The other process to control crowding is building brand new schools. The addition of Pigeon Forge High School several years ago has brought the G-P student population down to a reasonable size for the facilities available and also helped crowding at SCHS. A new primary school on Boyd’s Creek will open next year to help alleviate crowding at Seymour, while a proposed school on SR 66 will help with student population at Northview and Sevierville. State law requires that student/teacher ratios may not exceed certain standards. K-3 is 20:1, 4-6 is 25:1 while 7-12 grades are 30:1. The number is based on the average of teachers and students at a school. Sevier County is one of the last school systems in the state to start school and has several issues that result. Several teaching positions are borderline from the projections and the system must wait on hard first day numbers in some cases before it will allow those positions to be filled. Many candidates are already gone with commitments to other school systems by the time Sevier County has those numbers. “It’s been close a few times, but we’ve come out okay on getting the people we want,” said Dr. Jack Parton, Schools Superintendent. All of the county’s high schools showed increased enrollment on the first day. Pigeon Forge had numbers that were deceiving as last year the eighth grade was in the school while an addition at the middle school was completed. Seymour went into the morning expecting to go over 1,000 students, but catching up with students who have moved away over the summer dropped the number. “We’ll be watching these numbers very closely the first two weeks,” said Karen King in the Central Office. The first two weeks generally see a few late arrivals, requests from other schools for transcripts of students who have moved, and some shifting of students as parents realize that another school may be closer to where they live.