Note: This story was updated to include the newly released proposed maps.

Hundreds of families are getting a first look at whether their student’s school might change as the Alamance-Burlington School System unveils new proposed maps. 

The maps are part of the district’s six-step rezoning plan, undertaken in partnership with SchoolCAMP, a firm within N.C. State University’s Operations Research and Education Laboratory (OREd).

The work is meant to alleviate pressure on overcrowded schools, especially in parts of the county where the population has grown fastest.

Enrollment in ABSS dropped during the 2020-2021 school year. It has steadily increased to near pre-pandemic totals this school year to 22,569 students, according to state data.

Three ABSS schools, Garrett Elementary, Southern Middle and Williams High schools, are above 100% capacity, according to the latest school district data. Others – Wilson, Altamahaw-Ossipee, Elon and Southern Graham elementary schools and Hawfields middle schools – are at or above 98% capacity. The next most crowded high school after Williams is Southeast Alamance at 91.49% capacity, the district’s first new high school in over 50 years, which opened in 2023.

“I’ve heard from a lot of optimistic teachers at Garrett Elementary that their school might be a manageable size,” Medora Burke-Scoll, president of the Alamance-Burlington Association of Educators, said last month. 

“They’re looking forward to not having to take over the middle school building to try to fit all their kids in,” Burke-Scoll told ABSS school board members during a meeting last month where officials held a public comment session on the new school assignment zones.

ABSS’s 2026 “School Capacity and Student Assignments Plan” takes into account the county’s current and projected population and each school’s capacity. Officials say they’ll re-balance enrollment and access to programs across the district by reassigning some students, based on where they live.

“When we’re looking at the capacity of a school, there’s the seat capacity, but then there’s really what we would call the program capacity,” Mathew Palmer, one of the researchers at SchoolCAMP, said in an interview. 

For example, Palmer said, some districts take on school assignment zone changes in order to reduce or eliminate the need for mobile classrooms outside traditional school buildings.

Palmer told the school board in January that the project happened quickly to address the affected schools’ and families’ “pain points” as soon as possible as a “near-term” solution. But they’re also forecasting growth over the next decade to give the schools room to grow and avoid rezoning again in another two or three years.

So far, SchoolCAMP has forecasted the county’s population growth through land use studies. The firm also held community listening sessions with ABSS parents, staff and other stakeholders, as well as the county board of education.

“There are constraints in the solutions and in the system,” Palmer said. “There’s only so much money, only so many bus drivers. The buildings are on average 55 years old.”

Once SchoolCAMP collects feedback from the next meetings and makes any necessary adjustments, the board will need to vote on the maps to enact them. The district plans to notify families in April of school assignment changes that will take effect in August, at the start of the 2026-27 school year.

What criteria are being used to draw these new boundaries?

To draw new maps, SchoolCAMP uses a data-driven approach through a planning system called IPSAC. The tool breaks the county into “neighborhood planning units” (between 50 and 100 K-12 students each) and evaluates them against a set of criteria identified by the board and community surveys, like the one in January. These include:

• Capacity and “Optimal Utilization:” The goal is to maximize the use of buildings while pulling students out of overcrowded schools.
• Transportation Efficiency and Proximity: The goal is to minimize the distance students travel between home and school and create the most efficient bus routes possible, using data about how roads connect and travel times. 
• Future Development and Long-Term Stability: SchoolCAMP forecasts future residential development to ensure long-term stability for the new zones. Their land-use study found that roughly 13,000 new housing units are proposed or approved to be built in Alamance County by 2035. School zones will be planned to handle extra students anticipated from newly constructed homes.
• Preserving Neighborhoods and Feeder Patterns: While moving some students will be inevitable, taking into account things like major highways and not dividing established residential neighborhoods in half is designed to minimize disruption. The plan also aims to prioritize existing school feeder patterns.
  • This means kids who go to elementary school together get to stay together for middle and high school.

Using the planning segments, the software then treats them like puzzle pieces to build the assignment map. They shift these segments around until the data shows the best balance of capacity, transportation and neighborhood stability.

What rezoning rules do NC school districts have to follow?

In North Carolina, school “redistricting” or “rezoning” (legally referred to as student assignment and reassignment – hence the ABSS project’s name) is governed by state law.

The state generally delegates school assignment powers to local school boards, and the state law sets legal guardrails in place – namely, prohibiting zoning decisions or changes based on race, creed, color, or national origin.

North Carolina school boards adopt their own policies and guidelines. The ABSS board’s policy is publicly available online, and its guidelines for school assignments are under Policy 4150.

Can a student transfer if assigned to a different school?

No, not until the following school year, according to ABSS. School board policy states: “Students may not be reassigned into or out of schools that have been redistricted for one school year.”

Are there any exceptions to the rule?

Superintendent Aaron Fleming shared with the school board on Feb. 10 that students, like rising high school seniors, will likely be allowed to stay at their home schools. He said there will likely also be considerations to waive waiting periods for student-athletes.

What has been the community’s response so far?

According to Elon News Network, ABSS Chief Communications Officer Emily-Lynn Adkins said the community survey received over 3,000 responses.

When SchoolCAMP presented its Master Plan to the board on Jan. 13, there were 2,425 English language and 69 Spanish language responses.

What’s next?

The last chance to share feedback to be considered in the boundary maps is at the March 3 and 4 Solution Sessions at Williams and Southeast high schools. The meetings start at 6 p.m. and are open to the public.

Next week, SchoolCAMP will present the final rezoning proposal to the Board of Education. The presentation will take place during the board’s regularly scheduled work session on March 10 and is open to the public. Board members are set to hold a final vote on March 23.

“Hopefully, what we’ve conveyed is that it’s our responsibility as a district to think about our entire student population and our community,” Adkins said in an interview with The Alamance Fabric. “We’re thinking holistic, big picture.”

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