Indian River School Board discusses options to deal with overcrowding

The Indian River School District continues to experience major overcrowding issues, especially at their Sussex Central High School location.

Other schools affected by overcrowding include Phillip C. Showell Elementary, Southern Delaware School of the Arts, John M. Clayton Elementary, George Washington Carver Academy and Howard T. Ennis School.

That's why the Indian River School Board is coming together to identify any possible solutions.

They say they are considering creating a new school altogether to accommodate their quickly growing student population, a school that would be built to hold more students, unlike Sussex Central High.

Charles Bireley, the President of the Indian River School Board said, "That school, when it was built which was just a few years ago, was built for 1,300 hundred students and now, we're pushing 1,700 and probably in a couple more years, 1,800 or 1,850 and that's entirely too many students to be in that school."

Officials say their efforts to come up with a solution are serious, and that's why they are planning to hold another school board meeting in the next few weeks.

Bireley said, "For that, we are going to schedule another meeting, a special board meeting sometime in the month of February to really discuss this, have the numbers presented to us and that type of thing."

In the mean time, the school is using their auditorium and stage as temporary classrooms and they are even considering installing portable classrooms as a shorterm solution.