CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Over the next two months, the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System will begin a “comprehensive” rezoning of school districts in preparation for the opening of Kirkwood Middle in August.
At the CMCSS School Board Study Session Tuesday evening, the district will conduct a first reading of its rezoning recommendation. In the coming weeks, the district will hold several public feedback sessions for community input, and a final proposal is set to be presented to board on Feb. 8.
Local growth
In just the last 10 years, the population of Montgomery County has skyrocketed 27.7%. And this has been particularly felt at local schools.
During a strategic work presentation on school capacity at a School Board meeting on Nov. 2, Norm Brumblay, chief operations officer for CMCSS, said the district has a 30-year average growth of 677 new students every year; the current enrollment is 37,769 students.
He added that this year, the district experienced 4% higher than normal growth.
Seven elementary schools, three middle schools and two high schools are over 100% capacity. The district said it aims for 85% capacity in its buildings as that allows for more flexibility in programming and extracurricular opportunities.
Brumblay said the district is using 112 portable classrooms to alleviate some of the capacity issues, and several schools like Oakland Elementary and West Creek Elementary have undergone expansions recently.
About Kirkwood
Kirkwood Middle School, a $28 million project that has been funded in part by an increase in Montgomery County’s wheel tax, is part of a new 110-acre CMCSS campus at Rossview Road and Kirkwood Road. The new school will have 64 classrooms and a capacity for 1,209 students
“Similar to West Creek Middle School, this school has a BEP of 1,200 students, but it is expandable to 1,500 students when the need arises,” Brumblay said. “The campus will be capable of serving 3,730 students when it is fully open, and when it is fully expanded, it will be capable of serving 4,500 students.”
The district plans to open Kirkwood High in 2023-24 and Kirkwood Elementary in 2025-26. Brumblay added the campus will have its own set of athletic fields.
Rezoning process
The last comprehensive rezoning, which coincided with the opening of West Creek Middle in 2009, affected around 8,000 students, according to Brumblay.
At the end of 2021, the school district began the process of rezoning and selected a consulting firm, RSP and Associates, to evaluate its existing school zones and building capacities.
“The redistricting that we’re about to begin will likely be a comprehensive rezoning, and it will impact all current middle and high school zones,” Brumblay continued. “It’s important to note that at this time, no area of the county is considered grandfathered; we’re just at the beginning stages of this project.”
For the upcoming year, the only schools affected by the rezoning will be middle schools. Once the Kirkwood High is open, the high school zoning system will shift to the same boundaries as the middle schools to maintain the feeder system from the middle to high schools.
After the first reading on Tuesday, the district will hold three more sessions open to the public for feedback on the first proposal.
The first two informal public sessions will be held back to back on Jan. 17 and 18 at the CMCSS Central Services board room.
CMCSS’s Zoning Team will then meet Jan. 25, after which a formal public feedback session will be hosted on Feb. 1 at Rossview High. A final proposal is set to be presented to the board at the formal meeting on Feb. 8 for approval.
In addition to the public hearings, the district has opened an online survey where families and community members can share feedback and questions about rezoning.