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Source: Savannah Morning News, Ga.自存倉Jan. 16--The Savannah-Chatham Public Schools Board approved a new attendance zone for Port Wentworth that they say will please the parents who didn't want their children split up between schools outside the municipality.The zone, approved unanimously during the board's monthly meeting Wednesday, creates a single attendance zone for all of Port Wentworth. Students in kindergarten through third grade will attend classes at the Port Wentworth Elementary School campus in the older, southern side of town and students in grades four through eight will attend a new school to be built with education sales tax funds in the rapidly growing north side of town.But in their attempts to appease parents, the board seems to have lost sight of the reason for changing the attendance zone in the first place -- to create immediate space at overcrowded Godley Station K-8 School."There is more growth to come," Superintendent Thomas Lockamy said. "We already have need for another school in West Chatham. Now we've got overcrowding at Brock, Garden City, West Chatham, as well as Godley Station."Godley Station was built to serve 1,200 students with $28 million from the first education sales tax, ESPLOST I. But it was over capacity on opening day in 2011 because of the unanticipated growth in west Chatham County. Pre-kindergarten classes have been moved out and 14 portable classrooms were moved in to create space. But the school is still woefully overburdened with 1,600 students this year. Even more students are expected next year when two large apartment complexes open in the area.District administrators have developed several plans to provide relief at the school, which has to start serving lunches at 10 a.m. and requires 18 buses to transport students to and from home every day. But each time, the school board has sent them back to the drawing board in order to please dissatisfied parents. Last school year they scrapped a plan to move eighth-graders to a satellite campus at New Hampstead High. And this school year parent concerns prompted them to rework a plan that would have created immediate relief at Godley Station by reassigning Port Wentworth area students to a new K8 School to be built in the northern portion of the municipality and a converted K8 school at Mercer Middle in Garden City. That plan would have reduced Godley's enrollment by 500 students in 2014.But board members were swayed by the concerns of a grou迷你倉出租 of parents and Port Wentworth community leaders who asked the board not to split up the children of Port Wentworth. So they developed a new plan that would allow them to keep them all in the municipality. However, this plan requires resources that the public school system doesn't have."We're going to keep Port Wentworth open and there's no money in the budget for that," board member Shawn Kachmar said during the meeting. "And we're going to move portables over there and there is no money in the budget for that."In order to make the plan they approved Wednesday work, district officials will have to upgrade the Port Wentworth Elementary School campus and bring in portables. Because the aging facility is located across the street from a sugar refinery in an industrial area, officials had planned to close the school and sell it for at least $5 million. That money was supposed to help cover some of the costs of their multi-million dollar education sales tax construction program, ESPLOST II. Now they will have to find a way to make up for that $5 million and pay to staff, operate and provide school bus transportation for the two Port Wentworth campuses."We're going to have to raise some money to make all of this work out," board member Connie Hall said. "We're going to have to be really diligent about how our money is spent."In addition to creating costs, their new plan offers even less relief to Godley Station than they had hoped to accomplish. Staff had planned to move about 275 Port Wentworth area kindergarten, first and second graders out of Godley station and into Port Wentworth Elementary next year. When Port Wentworth's new ESPLOST II funded school opens in 2015-2016 they would house all area children in grades K-3 at the old elementary school campus and all in grades 4 through 8 at the new school. When that happens the residents of Port Wentworth will have classroom space for 1,687 students in their fast growing community.But it doesn't do much for the immediate space concerns at Godley station.Wednesday, in order to appease parents further, the district backed out on plans to move all 275 Port Wentworth students in kindergarten through second grade. Now only Port Wentworth's kindergarten and first grade students will be moved out of Godley next year.Copyright: ___ (c)2014 Savannah Morning News (Savannah, Ga.) Visit the Savannah Morning News (Savannah, Ga.) at savannahnow.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉