Schools gain 450 students

Hamilton County Schools must hire new teachers after 10th-day enrollment numbers show the system has added more than 450 students over this time last year, officials said.

When the Hamilton County Board of Education approved the system’s budget in June, it eliminated 45.5 school-based positions mostly from middle and high schools and added 40 positions to elementary schools, anticipating growth.

But even officials’ best guess wasn’t quite close enough, so the board will meet again Thursday to vote on how many new teachers to hire to accommodate the extra enrollees.

“It’s an imperfect science,” said Danielle Clark, spokeswoman for the school system. “We can project all we want, but we don’t know for sure until (students) show up.”

Enrollment in elementary schools is up by 436 students compared with the 10th day of school last year, and middle schools are down six. High schools gained 26, which includes an entirely new senior class at East Hamilton School.

East Lake Elementary principal Stacy Johnson will have five new teachers in her building today, after adding 95 more students than at this time last year. The teachers will have three days to set up their classrooms and will start teaching Monday.

The teachers new to East Lake are staff who have been moved from other schools that lost students, Clark said. Any completely new positions that must be added to the district’s budget require board approval, which likely will come Thursday, she said.

Johnson said there has been an increase in the school’s Hispanic population, mostly from students formerly at schools in Georgia, as well as overflow from East Side Elementary.

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