LEXINGTON, S.C. — Lexington School District One trustees approved final attendance lines for Beechwood Middle School at the March 19 board meeting.
Officials say the attendance lines will help alleviate overcrowding at Lexington Middle and Pleasant Hill Middle schools. Lexington Middle currently houses 1,000 students and Pleasant Hill Middle houses 1,201 students.
The attendance lines are also designed to balance student diversity, allow future student growth in permanent facilities, make use of natural and major road boundaries where possible and create true high school feeder patterns, according to officials.
Beechwood Middle and Pleasant Hill Middle schools feed students to Lexington High School, while Lexington Middle and Meadow Glen Middle feed students to River Bluff High School.
Beechwood Middle, on a 34.57-acre site at 1340 Highway 378, will open in August of 2019 for the 2019–2020 school year. The finished 196,000-square-foot school designed for 1,200 students has the capacity to serve 1,500 students.
The new attendance zone for Beechwood Middle School alters the attendance lines of Lexington Middle and Pleasant Hill Middle schools but does not redraw the Meadow Glen Middle attendance zone.
After receiving feedback from parents and community members during three public meetings and two presentations at board meetings, district administrators recommended postponing redrawing the Meadow Glen Middle attendance zone until 2021, when a new Lexington Middle School will open in a different location.
In the proposal, the district will allow rising eighth-graders and students currently in an Immersion Program, who are designated to change middle schools next year due to rezoning, the opportunity to stay at their current school for their final year at the school as long as their parents provide transportation. Officials say the district will not be able to provide special bus routes for “grandfathered” students because of state regulations and because the district already has a shortage of school buses.
If no eighth-graders or Immersion Program students elect to stay at their current schools by grandfathering, the district projects that Beechwood Middle will house 900 students, Lexington Middle 623 and Pleasant Hill Middle 717.
