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Six Blount County schools have been classified as “intolerable” in terms of overcrowding in a report approved by the school board Thursday.

The schools on the intolerable list include both Heritage and William Blount middle and high schools and Friendsville and Porter elementary schools.

After a short discussion, the board decided to amend the original report that was presented by Facilities Supervisor Brian Bell that listed only five schools as intolerable.

The annual report is done after the second 20-day enrollment reporting period. The report was created about three years ago to provide the county Planning Commission with information in regards to school overcrowding. The Planning Commission used it as a tool to regulate new development in the county in areas where schools were the most severely overcrowded.

At that time, three standards were developed for capacity purposes including design, square footage and academic. If a school met all three standards, it was labeled intolerable.

Several board members expressed concern about continuing to use square footage as a measure because it led to misleading results. Board member Charles Finley said square footage doesn’t have a lot to do with whether classrooms are overcrowded because large core areas, such as a gym or cafeteria, skew the results.

Board member John Davis agreed that it misleads the public and pointed out the situation at Porter Elementary School, which Bell said was the most overcrowded elementary school in the system.

On the initial report, Porter was only classified as “high,” a step below intolerable.
In the 1970s before the high schools were consolidated, Porter served as a high school and as a result, had a larger gym, cafeteria and other core facilities. But all available classroom space is being used, and portable classrooms have been added to help with overflow.

By removing the square footage standard, Porter moved up on the classification list.
Bell said that the school system uses the academic capacity based on the state’s Basic Education Program teacher/pupil ratio for determining which schools are overcrowded.

Bell will be sending a letter and a copy of the amended report to County Commission and the Maryville and Alcoa city governments.

In other action, the board approved the 2007-2010 contract with the Blount County Education Association; changing the monthly meeting times to 6 p.m. starting in December, and purchasing reading software for Heritage High School. Clayton Homes Inc. and Ruby Tuesday Inc. have donated money to pay for the software, and the board agreed to appropriate about $5,000 to purchase computers and accessories for the project.