Brevard High Campus May Be New Home of Alternative Education School

Schools Superintendent Jeff McDaris is asking the Transylvania School Board to consider moving Davidson River School to the Brevard campus, partly to accommodate the high demand for pre-K classes.

BREVARD — Transylvania County Schools is considering a move of its alternative Davidson River School to the Brevard High School campus, freeing up space for additional, much sought-after, pre-K classes.

“I have initiated a discussion about Davidson River with the Board as we look at opportunities to benefit students,” Superintendent Jeff McDaris wrote in an email to NewsBeat last week, adding that any action would need the approval of the School Board.

He said Wednesday that he still hoped to bring the idea before the Board in June, though it has not been placed on a meeting agenda. And, he said, the discussion could be delayed by a variety of factors, including the amount of money available for school improvements in the coming year’s budget, which has yet to be approved by the County Commission.

His plan calls for Davidson River to retain its status as a separate school, he said, with its own entrance, principal and school resource officer (SRO), which would mean a total of two SROs at the Brevard campus.

Besides creating space for, eventually, up to four pre-K classrooms, McDaris wrote in an email to Board members, the move would benefit Davidson River students, “who do not thrive in a traditional school environment,” according to the district’s website.

These advantages would include better access to extracurricular activities, physical education and career and technical education — and to the school itself, which is now located in a historic building on Ecusta Road, in eastern Transylvania.

Poor attendance rates at the school, which sometimes dip as low as 60 percent, are due to many factors, McDaris wrote, including the challenging living situations of many of its students.

But its low attendance can also be blamed on “a reluctance of families in the western end (of the county) to be at the DRS campus,” he wrote.

Though all four of the county’s elementary schools currently offer pre-K classes, with a total 66 slots, 115 students were on the waiting list for these positions last week, said Audrey Reneau, who, among other roles at the district, serves as director of early learning.

“We have a lot of need in our county, and we know families need quality preschool,” she said of pre-K classes, which focus on preparing 4-year-old students for kindergarten.

“It’s laying that foundation of early learning so students can be more successful. We do letters and sounds and numbers. We do science and social studies,” Reneau said.

The district would be reimbursed for each additional pre-K student either with federal funds or by families of students, depending on their ability to pay, she said, and the added enrollment would cover some but not all of the costs of the expansion.

“We’re not out to make money,” she said. “We’re out to provide quality learning.”

Though enrollment at Brevard High has crept up the past four years, McDaris wrote, the campus has enough space for Davidson River. If approved, it would likely be located in the current social studies wing.

“There would be some renovation costs,” though these costs would be minor and most of the work could be performed by school maintenance staff, he wrote.

Davidson River “serves a diverse student population including students who have lost course credit, may have been retained in the past, and/or students who may not otherwise graduate with age-appropriate peers,” the district’s website says.

Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com