Cape board weighs elementary redistricting

With more growth than expected around Love Creek Elementary, Cape officials are considering moving about 100 students from Love Creek to Rehoboth Elementary beginning with the 2019-20 school year.

Enrollment data showed Love Creek enrolled 28 more students than last year and is expected to gain 29 more next year. Rehoboth gained only 2 students this year and is projected to gain 2 more next year.

All areas considered for redistricting, from Plantations Road west to Route 9 and east to Mulberry Knoll, feed into Beacon Middle School and would alleviate crowding at Love Creek, administrators said.

Cape Superintendent Bob Fulton said redistricting a base group of neighborhoods including Henlopen Landing, Bridle Ridge and Gosling Creek would move 88 students to Rehoboth.

Fulton said the district is evaluating whether to add nearby neighborhoods to the base group. Adding Coastal Club would move 111 students to Rehoboth; adding Coastal Club and Reserves at Lewes Landing would move 119 students, and adding the Retreat and Beachwoods would move 107 students.

“They really have nowhere else to go,” Fulton said.

Some Rehoboth Elementary students were moved to Love Creek when it opened in 2017. School board President Alison Myers said redistricting would affect a small number of students compared to the district as a whole.

“I feel bad for parents who are now being moved again, but I understand we don’t have a choice,” Myers said. “There’s a potential for staff movement as well.”

Fulton said students would be moving as a group with neighborhood friends, and no students would have to drive past Love Creek to attend Rehoboth.

School board member Andy Lewis said planners thought Milton’s open land would be developed first.

“But what’s turned out is, down in the Lewes area right around Love Creek, everybody is squeezing in anything they can get in there,” he said. “It’s crazy, the expansion.”

Lewis said redistricting will likely be necessary in Lewes in the future, and when all five new elementary schools are completed.

“We’re working off a 2007 study that showed 6,400 students will be in the Cape district by 2030,” Lewis said. “We will be above that number by then.”

As of Sept. 30, 5,643 students were enrolled in the Cape district.Proposed redistricting maps are on the school board website. An update will be provided at the Thursday, Nov. 15 school board meeting, with board decision expected at the Thursday, Dec. 13 meeting.