More classrooms coming to Chapin – and maybe more schools, too

Chapin’s growth is affecting schools, too.

More classrooms are coming in what could be the start of significant school expansion there.

After giving the go-ahead to add up to 20 classrooms at Chapin Middle School by fall 2018, Lexington-Richland 5 leaders are looking at a recommendation to open three new facilities.

More classrooms are necessary to keep pace with growth expected in and around the Lexington County community, Superintendent Stephen Hefner said in a report to school board members last week.

The approved expansion of Chapin Middle is urgent, since its 864 7th- and 8th-graders are in a school built for 816 students, the report said. The $5.2 million addition will be paid for with a combination of savings and leftover money from other building projects, according to the plan adopted.

But Hefner also proposed two new elementary schools and one middle school be considered for the Chapin area. He offered no idea on cost, size, location, when they would open – or how to pay for them.

Many details remain to be worked out “in a deliberate step-by-step manner,” school spokesman Mark Bounds said.

Hefner dubbed his report “Vision 2020.”

New schools often require a referendum asking voters to approve debt paid off by a property tax hike.

Lexington-Richland 5 just finished a $243.7 million package of improvements authorized in 2008 at many of its 22 schools.

It’s too soon to say a referendum is coming if the seven school board members agree new schools in the Chapin area are needed, Bounds said.

The extra classrooms and schools in the Chapin area are the most dramatic in a series of improvements at 10 schools and district headquarters as well as new technology for all that Hefner proposed.

No price tag for the package was attached.

Classroom expansion is vital as enrollment starts to grow again in schools on the north side of Lake Murray after being flat for five years, Hefner’s report said.

The enrollment of nearly 17,000 students this fall is an increase of almost 600 in the past three years, a total that the report calls “a steep trajectory of growth.”

That’s just the start of a wave of new students expected in the fourth-largest of eight Midlands school districts, officials said.

“All indicators are that this enrollment trend will continue,” Bounds said.

This story was originally published October 2, 2016 at 5:50 PM with the headline "More classrooms coming to Chapin – and maybe more schools, too."