Tonight's School Board Meeting To Shed More Light on Enrollment and Capacity Concerns in Albany Schools

The Board of Education will meet tonight to discuss a range of topics, from the Albany Pool construction project to school capacity and enrollment.

The conversation should provide further insight into how many students the district can safely enroll at area schools.

Supporters of higher enrollment say it allows the district to offer more varied classes and a more diverse experience for students.

But parents and students at Albany High in particular have previously expressed concerns about high enrollment related to safety in the stairwells, which slows to a crawl between classes.

The Albany Pool contract will be awarded to McCrary Construction in the amount of $6.179 million. McCrary was the apparent low bidder in August when the Albany Unified School District opened bids from 11 contractors.

This amount will cover pool construction only; the bid was $971,000 less than the amount indicated in the working construction budget.

With the pool construction bid awarded, the school board will be able to consider how much money it can spend on portable classrooms, which were part of the bond voters approved for the pool project.

Superintendent Marla Stephenson said in August that the number of classrooms built would depend on both available money and how much space students actually need. To get a better understanding of that, the school district has hired consultant David Burke, the project manager for pool construction, to study school capacity and student body demographics.

Burke will present an initial report about capacity to the board tonight. In his report, which is included in tonight's agenda packet, Burke points out that capacity can be measured in several ways. Determining factors can include both class size limits and also fire exiting requirements. There is no written indication in tonight's report about fire exiting requirements.

Facility capacities for 2010-11, based on a "class-size reduction model," were listed as follows: Cornell Elementary, 567 students; Marin Elementary, 555 students; Ocean View Elementary, 642 students; Albany Middle School, 908 students; Albany High, 1,258 students; MacGregor High, 100 students. The district's total capacity in this model would be 4,030.

Another model, the "non-class size reduction" view, puts the total capacity at 4,447.

Current enrollment on all campuses except Cornell is less than total capacity in both of these cases: Cornell, 577; Marin, 531; Ocean View, 565; Albany Middle, 892; Albany High, 1,227; MacGregor High, 49. The district's current total enrollment is 3,841 students.

It was unclear from the board agenda exactly how capacity was calculated, and whether it was simply based on classroom "loading" capacity, or also took into account safe exiting procedures.

The board also will vote, among other issues, on a new logo for the Albany Unified School District.

Check back on Albany Patch on Wednesday for more details about the topics covered tonight at the board meeting, which takes place at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center.