The Bulloch County Schools district started classes Thursday, Aug. 1 with an enrollment of 10,963 students the first day but poised to quickly exceed last spring’s count of 11,024 students among the 15 established campuses, which already have 20 temporary, modular classroom buildings and five new ones on order.

Considering that the state’s maximum regular class size is 21 students for first through third grades and increases for older students and that most or all of those 25 “portable units” contain two classrooms, they will roughly equal the capacity of a 1,000-student school. Added over a period of years, the 20 current portable units were already in place last school year.

On the first day of the 2024-2025 term, Superintendent Charles Wilson acknowledged that still more modular classrooms will probably be added by the end of the decade.

“Unless something changes significantly, I suspect that will be the case,” he said.

Yes, a new 2,000-student Southeast Bulloch High School, expandable to 3,000 students, is in the planning phase with land secured and a construction management firm and architect hired. But Wilson said that the likely start date for construction has been pushed out to mid-2026 because of funding considerations. Current funding sources are a five-year, 1% Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax already being collected – against which $80 million could be borrowed through a bond sale – and an estimated $15 million in state funding.

That’s $95 million, and the E-SPLOST has been projected to accumulate more, up to a $110 million total in sales tax revenue. But cost projections for the school as designed have exceeded both the $95 million and $110 million funding estimates.

“Based on the last meeting and the overall discussion I had with the board, we probably won’t move forward in the actual construction of that  school until mid-2026 at the  earliest, because we can’t start a project if we  don’t know that we have cash flow for it,” Wilson said. “In the end, if you look at the resources we have available, all we have is our E-SPLOST because we’re not willing to levy a property tax and an additional bond issuance, which typically communities facing this type  of explosive growth will  have to  do.”

He said he understands the sentiment against increasing  property tax but that without additional resources, construction of the new school will have to wait until money accumulates from the sales tax and its next renewal can be considered.

“We’ll be addressing a lot of that over the next year to two years. … Once construction begins, you’re still looking at three- to four-year process,” Wilson said.

That pushes the probable opening date of the new school close to the end of the decade, he confirmed, specifying “2029 or 2030.”

The 10,963-student count was provided at the end of the first day by Hayley Greene, the Bulloch County Schools  public relations  director. That is a 2.5% increase from  the 10,691 students enrolled the first day of school 2023. But school administrators always anticipate that enrollment will continue to increase for the first 10 days of school with late registrations and transfers, and potentially more through Labor Day.

Official full-time-equivalent attendance reports are filed with the state Department of Education in October and March. Bulloch County Schools’ counts were 11,068 in October 2023 and 11,024 in March 2024.

 

Signs of growth

Except for during the 2020-2021 COVID pandemic disruption, the school district has averaged 2%  to 3% annual enrollment growth in recent years.  So far, a predicted larger influx of new residents resulting from the establishment of Hyundai Motor Group’s electric vehicle Metaplant America in northern Bryan County and the construction of some of its supply manufacturers in southern Bulloch has yet to arrive.

However, Thursday’s enrollment count came after the processing of 623 new-student applications, which were filed by families and can include more than one student per form. The school district staff had 72 more such applications “in the queue” for review and final approval, and 81 more on hold for missing or incorrect documents, plus 51 newly submitted applications awaiting initial review by the schools, Greene reported.

With more growth occurring in the southeastern part of the county,  new Southeast Bulloch High School has been proposed as the key move in a strategic shuffle, with the current SEB High School to then become SEB Middle School, and the current middle school  to  become Southeast Bulloch Upper Elementary. By receiving fourth and fifth grades, the upper elementary would free up capacity for more prekindergarten through third grade students at Brooklet Elementary School, Nevils Elementary School  and Stilson Elementary School.

The five new mobile units on order include three for Langston Chapel Middle School, which currently has none, and two additional mobile units for Southeast Bulloch Middle  School, which already has five, bringing its total to seven.

“The board did approve that, and we’re working with the vendors to get those, but because they have to construct the units, obviously, we don’t expect having those installed before maybe January or February,” Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Brad Boykin said July 29. “The anticipation is to have them  ready before  next school year.”

No new ones are currently on order  for Brooklet Elementary, but that school already has six modular classroom units grouped with a modular restroom building. Beginning about three years ago, these were planned to function as “an additional classroom wing” of portable units, placed along a walkway and fenced in, Wilson said.

 

The AC at MLES

The first school he visited Thursday was Mattie Lively Elementary School, which has not needed  any modular classrooms and but has another facility-related issue. As previously reported, the  air-conditioning portion of the school’s heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system  is failing, affecting various portions of the building until repairs are  made.

This  summer, tinting was  added  to the windows to  keep out some of the  sun’s  heat,  replacements for parts that have  been failing  were  ordered in advance to speed  repairs, and portable air-conditioning units  are  now in use in at least 10 classrooms. Despite its problems, the schoolwide HVAC is set to turn on early, at 3 a.m. on school days to "pre-cool" the building.

All  of this  is done in anticipation of a complete replacement of the system, with an early cost estimate of $1.7 million, and which Wilson has said could take a year to design and install.

A plaque in the lobby shows that the current Mattie Lively Elementary School building opened in 2012, so the HVAC has only been in use for 12 years.

“I’m disappointed,” Wilson said. “ I think the system should have lasted at least another five, if not  10, years.  But here we are and what we’re trying to do is be  as proactive  as possible about  fixing it so that it doesn’t get worse.”

As  he spoke to reporters in the cafetorium, which  was  cooled quite well, school system maintenance employees who  arrived with a bucket truck were climbing onto the roof of the building for another emergency repair. The  condenser unit that cools the school’s main office and lobby, which was noticeably warmer,  had broken, and Wilson said he  hoped this will be fixed by  Monday.

Meanwhile, MLES Principal Bernard Bodison was attending to typical first-day matters in the school, which has around 650 students in prekindergarten through fifth grade.

“We’re just glad to have the students back,” Bodison said mid-morning. “Everybody got here pretty well. We had some parents who may  not have registered yet, we got them  registered up and made sure the parents had their  car-rider forms or bus transportation so we  know how kids will get here and how  they get home.”

He is one of three “new” principals among the 15 schools this year, but  none  are actually new to Bulloch County Schools. Al Dekle, who was Mattie Lively’s principal last year, is principal at Langston Chapel Elementary this year. Bodison was an assistant  principal at Mattie Lively last year and was promoted. Nate Pennington, Ed.D.,  previously principal of Langston Chapel Elementary, is now principal at Portal Elementary.

 

Conduct and attendance

New this school year, the Bulloch County Schools have an updated Code of Conduct, with tighter ranges of consequences for violations, and Wilson wants parents, and students who are capable, to read it carefully and not be caught by surprise.

“We have reset our Student Code of Conduct,” he said. “It was a complete overhaul, starting at the board level down to the administrative level.   The expectations for students are much more significant and tighter. That being said, I cannot emphasize and encourage parents enough to make sure they read and understand, and students too, that code of conduct.”

Look online at bullochschools.org/codeofconduct. There’s even a video.

The school system leadership is also bearing down harder on attendance problems, since attendance has never fully recovered after it was made nearly optional during the pandemic.

“The  last few years we have  been steadily trying to  recover from this attendance problem,” Wilson said. “We  have once again heightened our efforts around expectations  of student attendance. Students  can’t learn if they’re not here, and they can’t learn if they’re not on time.”

Other than Mattie Lively’s cooling difficulties, a school bus malfunction that was fixed but delayed a homebound route and the usual parent-vehicle traffic congestion around some schools,  no  significant difficulties were reported as of 4 p.m. on the first day of school.