“When it came down to it, the board was just not willing to do it,” Icenhour said. “I think there was just too much pressure on them from Jamestown High School parents whose kids would have been moved out of the district. So it was a let’s just defer that decision, that food fight, until we actually do the physical plant changes and we’ve got to do it.” The School Board previously redistricted in 2007 and 2018, and both processes were emotional and drawn-out affairs. For this reason, Icenhour said that the school board wants to draw more permanent districts that will minimize community pushback. According to Mendez, redistricting will have to occur soon since all three high schools are currently over or nearing capacity. Jamestown is at 109 percent capacity, Lafayette is at 87 percent and Warhill is at 94 percent, signifying that all institutions are nearing their thresholds for student occupancy. This has impacted Jamestown severely, so much so that it currently uses trailers behind the school to accommodate all their students.
I think that in our community the entire school board should not be white, I think the school board should represent other voices. — Jennifer Mendez These utilization rates also directly affect the funding each of these schools receives and determines how they can support their students with advanced classes, facilities, extracurricular activities and teacher instruction. Therefore, many parents are very concerned about their children attending the best-funded, and thus the best-attended, high schools in the district. According to Icenhour, these concerns create a self-perpetuating cycle where parents push for
their students to attend what they consider to be the best schools — which are also the most overutilized ones — which increases their enrollment even more, exacerbating over-enrollment. “It’s difficult for me as one of the board members who funds this thing to see one way overcrowded and one underutilized,” Icenhour said. “That’s just not an efficient use of the taxpayers’ money.” According to Mendez, this funding system is the real cause of inequalities between the district’s schools, rather than the zoning boundaries themselves. She said that during the 2017 redistricting process, many Lafayette parents wanted to push the numbers of students attending Lafayette up to reach full capacity so the school could receive more funding. “Lafayette parents tried to use the redistricting to talk about the funding structure issue and how it would be good to mix up where wealthy kids go so they aren’t all going to one school,” Mendez said. This unequal utilization is particularly frustrating for Icenhour, who said he would like to see additional capacity at Jamestown moving forward, as well as redrawing the districts so that less students are going there. According to Icenhour, there are plans for
expansions to all three high schools over the next five to six years. Mendez remarked on the difficulty of having her child attend Lafayette, but bussed to Jamestown in order to receive Advanced Placement instruction in classes not offered at Lafayette. “My son was bussed to Jamestown to take an AP Music Theory class and he lost 30 minutes of instructional time,” Mendez said. According to Icenhour, there is some concern that the school board has not properly spent the money allocated to them by the county’s Board of Supervisors. He said that while he and the rest of the board of supervisors can theoretically attach conditional strings to the funds that they give to the school board, they have found that it is better to sit down and talk through any concerns they might have as opposed to micromanaging. Mendez also expressed her concerns about representation on the school board possibly affecting their priorities for the district. “I think that in our community the entire school board should not be white, I think the school board should represent other voices,” Mendez said. “Our schools should look like our community. And they don’t because there are higher concentrations in different schools.”
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