JACKSON SCHOOLS FACE SOARING ENROLLMENTS

JACKSON -- With 260 seniors exiting Jackson High School this year but 360 entering, the board of education and school administrators wonder where answers lie for their burgeoning district.

With 550 square miles inside the Jackson R-2 School District boundaries, chances are that children who move into Cape Girardeau County will attend Jackson schools.

The district extends to the Mississippi River at Neely's Landing, takes in a small portion of Bollinger County and touches the Perry County line. Some students who live practically within walking distance of Wal-Mart on Route K attend Jackson schools.

District buses travel 1,700 miles of regular routes every day, making transportation and bus replacement costs soar.

Total enrollment for Jackson public schools is about 4,035, compared to Cape Girardeau public school's 4,413. Estimates show that next year Jackson will have about 4,240 students compared to Cape Girardeau's estimated 4,440.

Of course, Cape Girardeau's six parochial schools take some of the student population in that city -- approximately 1,500 compared to the 429 in St. Paul Lutheran School and Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Jackson.

Many of Jackson's parochial students will end up in public schools before they graduate, as both schools end at eighth grade.

Other students come in from Nell Holcomb School, where district taxpayers foot the tuition to send 8th-graders to Jackson or Cape Girardeau to finish their educations.

The growth issue is complex, but all other facts and figures aside, the immediate problem facing the Jackson Board of Education is with the 100 extra students in the Class of 1999 and where to put them.

And the Class of 1999 isn't an anomaly; classes below 300 soon will be history for Jackson public schools, said high school principal Vernon Huck.

Five years ago, taking an elementary school near the high school campus was a quick fix to overcrowding problems at Jackson High School. It provided 16 classrooms. In addition, the district constructed a multipurpose building.

Now it's time for more expansion, according to Huck.

"If you are talking immediate needs for next year, we will need an additional three classrooms," he said. "It would be nice to have 12 additional classrooms."

The good news is, should the district decide building is the best answer, Jackson High School isn't landlocked as some believe. Huck said there is an area of road between A, B and C Building where a building could be erected.

"But it will take a lot more to do than me saying so," Huck said.

Voters got behind a $4.75 million Jackson Middle School, passing a bond issue to raise money for it. It alleviated some overcrowding in the elementary schools by taking sixth-grade students and the junior high by taking seventh-grade students.

But one new, state-of-the art building wasn't enough, Superintendent Howard Jones said. It helped, but the district was so overcrowded, the middle school merely helped get things to a reasonable level. And, of course, it didn't help the high school at all.

Voters in the district probably can look for another bond issue on the ballot soon. A facilities review committee has been meeting in Jackson to find long-term solutions to the district's growth problems. Hauling a few mobile classrooms onto school grounds won't be enough, Jones said.

"We initially wanted to address this in the April election, but now my thought is that we wouldn't present anything before August," he said.

"In most districts, you say, `We've had this much growth so we need this school' and you float an issue," Jones said. "In Jackson, the needs are spread throughout. It's very convoluted and confusing."