9 Horry County Schools over-crowded after growth exceeds projections

The 45-day Average Daily Membership numbers released at Monday’s Horry County Schools facilities meeting show larger student population than the district’s projections.

And there are nine schools that are over their functional capacity.

District numbers show an additional 872 students although they had only projected an increase of 755, with a 45-day ADM of more than 44,060 students, according to Horry County Schools coordinator of planning Joe Burch.

The ADM shows the number of students on campus, not counting students who leave their base schools for other programs.

“We have exceeded 44,000 students this month, that is a new record for us,” said Burch. “Where we saw a lot of that was in kindergarten.”

In the past, the district’s elementary school growth hasn’t kept up with live births in the county, meaning the newborns were leaving the area.

This year, said Burch, that trend reversed.

But the growth poses a problem for the district, which now has nine schools that are currently over their functional capacity, not counting modular classrooms. Six of those are elementary schools.

The district is currently developing a five-year short-term building plan, and the school board is looking at school capacity and building condition as meters to help them decide where to spend the $51.5 million budgeted for the capital plan over the next five years.

Schools that are overcapacity are:

▪ Aynor Elementary School

▪ Aynor Middle School

▪ Carolina Forest Elementary School

▪ Ocean Bay Elementary School

▪ River Oaks Elementary School

▪ Conway Elementary School

▪ Myrtle Beach Primary School

▪ Myrtle Beach Intermediate School

▪ Ocean Drive Elementary

This story was originally published November 20, 2017 at 8:49 PM with the headline "9 Horry County Schools over-crowded after growth exceeds projections."