This year, students and teachers are celebrating 40 years at John Kerr Elementary School. With that, city leaders are also still trying to figure out what to do about the old school and the growing number of students not only in that school, but in others as well.

The school board recently hired a company to do a study to figure out more about student population growth within the City. The results from that are supposed to be done by the end of March.

School leaders are hoping to have a recommendation about John Kerr Elementary School and a solution to the overcrowding problem in the district at the beginning of this summer. Then they'll know if they need to build a fifth elementary school, redistrict students to send them to different schools or reconfigure what grades will go to which schools.

"We really need to know where enrollment growth is going before we can develop that plan," said WPS Executive Director Kevin McKew. "So it's a lot of work in a short amount of time, but the objective is by June that the school board have before them a set of recommendations on what we will go to council with."

A public hearing is set for March 5th. City councilors and school board members will meet then too. There will be another opportunity for people to come in and tell city leaders what they think about the John Kerr project at the school board meeting in April.

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