A Midlands school district is changing its attendance lines. What to know
On July 1 next year, the Lexington-Richland 5 school district will change.
After years of planning, the district is restructuring its school system, creating new middle schools and adjusting its attendance lines.
District superintendent Akil Ross held a virtual question-and-answer session Tuesday with parents in the Chapin-Irmo area to prepare them for how the district will look different next school year.
The changes will eliminate the intermediate school level, which currently houses sixth graders transitioning between elementary and middle schools. Chapin Intermediate and CrossRoads Intermediate will be replaced by a new CrossRoads Middle School and Spring Hill Middle School. Spring Hill will take over the campus of the current Chapin Middle School, while Chapin Middle will shift to the Chapin Intermediate campus.
CrossRoads will take students matriculating from H.E. Corley, Leaphart and Nursery Road elementaries. Dutch Fork Middle will now take students from Oak Pointe, River Springs and Dutch Fork Elementary. Irmo Middle will take students from Harbison West, Seven Oaks and Irmo Elementary. Students from CrossRoads Middle would feed into both Dutch Fork and Irmo high schools.
In the Chapin area, the new Chapin Middle will take students from Chapin Elementary and Piney Woods, while Spring Hill Middle will draw from Ballentine and Lake Murray. Both middle schools would then feed into Chapin High School.
The attendance lines in the district will be changing for elementary schools as well. The Chapin elementary attendance zone will shrink, as the Piney Woods area will shift east toward the town of Chapin and Interstate 26, while the lines for Ballentine, Dutch Fork, H.E. Corley and Oak Pointe will also stretch to the west.
“We looked at this with demographers, and saw there will be growing trends as populations shift out to Chapin,” Ross said Tuesday.
Keeping student needs in mind
The new lines attempt to keep neighbors together, but “with some large neighborhoods its tough, because they’re divided by a major road or creek or stream,” he said.
Because some students at Ballentine would be shifted to H.E. Corley, and thus from Chapin High to Dutch Fork, the district is offering a “preferred choice” option to stay at their current school, “based on available space in those respective grades at Ballentine Elementary during our normal magnet choice lottery application,” said Michael Harris, the chief of student services and planning. “They will have the opportunity to stay through the highest grade level.”
Other students might have the opportunity to stay at their current school based on the school-specific programs their child is involved with, Harris said.
“This rezoning and redistricting allows us to balance our enrollment and our schools, based on the availability of space,” Harris said. “One grade may have more seats than another.”
Beginning with the 2026-27 school year, all elementary schools in the district will start classes at 7:30 a.m. and dismiss at 2:20 p.m. Middle school will run from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m., and high school will be from 8:20 a.m. to 3:40 p.m.
Ross said he hopes parents will understand where their student is going in time to take part in welcome events at each school in late May. Parents can check if their zone is changing by typing their address into the school district website.
Bond projects
The new attendance lines were approved by the school board last year, contingent on approval of a $240 million bond referendum that was passed by the district’s voters in November. One of the projects included in the bond is key to the realignment, as Lexington-Richland 5 is closing on four pieces of property along Hollingshed Road that will become the new Dutch Fork Elementary School.
The district will keep the current Dutch Fork Elementary site as the Richlex Education Center. The new center will host adult education services currently run out of Irmo High, the Academy for Success now housed at Spring Hill High School and the online FIVE program, moving from Piney Woods Elementary.
Other bond projects that Ross expects to see move forward soon include the addition of a new 20,000-square-foot wing to Lake Murray Elementary, a 16,000-square-foot addition to Chapin Elementary, and newly enclosed classrooms at Harbison West and Nursery Road elementary schools.
Also included in the bond were:
- A digital solutions and artificial intelligence lab at Dutch Fork High School that would cost $800,000
- A construction and infrastructure workforce development lab at the Center for Advanced Technical Studies at a cost of $10.5 million
- $30 million for a small business incubation center at Irmo High School
- A $21 million fine arts center/auditorium at Chapin High School
- $25 million worth of improvements to the district office, which previously had to move staff because of a mold outbreak
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