New school year facing recession-related challenges

UNDATED - School doors in the Gainesville area begin opening for another year this week with the specter of the recession hanging over the heads of students, teachers, other staff, administrators, and school boards.<br /> <br /> For the first time in recent memory, one of the largest school systems in the area - Hall County's - is not expecting an increase in enrollment. Other systems are expecting an increase but not as much as in recent years. It's a result of the slowing in residential growth in the area - meaning not as many new people relocating... leading to fewer new students. Teachers and other school system personnel are being asked to take unpaid furloughs during the year. School systems are grappling with an ever-shrinking outlay of money from the state.<br /> <br /> Fewer new schools are opening this year and major renovations of existing buildings were not as common this summer as in recent years. (See separate story titled: Back-to-School At-a-Glance, which lists each school's opening date, expected enrollment, and whether they will open new schools and what, if any, major renovations occurred over the summer.) <br /> <br /> HALL COUNTY<br /> <br /> The Hall County School System will open one new building, the new Flowery Branch High School on Spout Springs Road (across from Spout Springs Elementary). Initially, the Board of Education had designed this new facility to handle the dynamic growth that had been occurring in the Flowery Branch area. <br /> <br /> "During the past seven years, while all of our other five middle and high school districts had been fairly stagnant in terms of student growth, the Flowery Branch district had seen consistent increases in student population," Superintendent Will Schofield said. "The original plan had been for this new facility to be the system's seventh middle and high school district." <br /> <br /> However, with the economic downturn, growth everywhere, including Flowery Branch has flattened out. At this time the system is projecting an enrollment of 25,094 compared to 25,133 from last year, the only system in the area not expecting at least a small increase in student population. <br /> <br /> "Given the highly demanding economic challenges all school systems are facing," Schofield added, "the Board decided to move the student population of the current FBHS to the new facility, which has a larger student capacity, move the Davis Middle students to the current FBHS facility, which has a larger capacity than Davis, and finally, to shift the student population from South Hall Middle to the current Davis facility to allow SHMS to undergo need renovation, which could take two-plus years." <br /> <br /> By taking this course of action, he said, the school board has saved $1 million. "In addition, with two new wings at the current SHMS that needs no renovation, the system will operate our first program of choice aimed at gifted studentsâ

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