With half the school year already on the books, Falcon School District 49 has seen significant growth in the student population in both coordinated and charter schools. The passage of ballot measure 3B in November 2016 has provided funding for the district to address growth through construction of new schools and refurbishment of existing facilities.Melissa Andrews, community and project planning manager, said the district grew by about 600 students for the 2017-2018 school year, although the final number will not be published through the Colorado Department of Education until January or February 2018.According to the CDEís website, the average growth rate of pupil count for students in preschool through 12th-grade in Colorado for the past 20 years has been 1.4 percent. Brett Ridgway, chief business officer, said D 49 grew by 3.7 percent from last Octoberís student count to the most recent count.ìA good portion of that growth was in Banning Lewis Ranch,î Andrews said. ìPaint Brush Hills is planning to build more than 500 additional homes, and Meridian Ranch is still building. All of that growth is in the Falcon zone, but Banning Lewis Ranch will become part of the POWER zone in 2019.îBoundary changes like what BLR will experience provide an additional way to relieve overcrowding in certain parts of the district, she said. The Sand Creek zone is the slowest-growing for now, so other boundaries are being adjusted to funnel kids who are closer to that zoneís facilities into those schools, rather than busing them across the district, Andrews said.Bennett Ranch Elementary School, which is currently under construction, is located on Londonderry Drive, near Falcon Middle School. Andrews said BRES was intentionally placed there to alleviate the growth at Meridian Ranch Elementary School.Ridgway said the district had a list of more than 200 projects it planned to undertake with money from the mill levy override ballot measure. Every building in the district benefited from that money in some way, but the work is moving more slowly than anticipated, he said.ìWe have had to work with contractors who have a lot of other work to do besides with school districts,î Ridgway said. ìFor example, with the Vista del Pico Elementary School in Banning Lewis Ranch, the contractor market lacked availability to begin work in time to open in August 2018. We decided to wait until the 2019 school year to open it rather than open it part-way through the 2018-2019 school year.îMatt Meister, director of communications, said the districtís website has a list of 3B project reports that is updated monthly, if not more frequently. ìWe have worked really hard to be transparent and accountable,î he said. ìWe have put a lot of resources into doing that.îAndrews said the district has been staying on top of current real estate sales to see how many homes have been sold and in what neighborhoods to help them determine district-wide future building needs.ìBased on the data just from the development we know about now, we will need to add 12 elementary schools, three middle schools and one high school to address that new growth,î Andrews said. ìThose facilities will not address over-capacity issues at the other schools. We are still playing catch-up on that.î
