Superintendent Dr. Quinn said the district is entering “an historical moment” as it proposed a redraw of attendance zones to open three new schools and redistribute students across elementary, middle and high schools ahead of next year.

The presentation by Chief Operations Officer Dr. Hopkins, Executive Director of Instructional Technology Matt Hoffman and Director of Transportation Ross Hunter laid out principles that guided the maps and enumerated enrollment projections and growth assumptions used to size the new zones.

The district said it followed geography-only rules—“No demographics involved, strictly on geography,” Dr. Hopkins said—and prioritized keeping neighborhoods intact, using major roads as boundaries, creating clean feeder patterns from elementary to middle to high school, and leaving roughly 20% spare capacity to accommodate near-term growth.

Why it matters: The plan creates the new Liberty Hill Elementary and Lake Wylie High and reorganizes feeder patterns so that elementary clusters feed specific middle schools and then high schools. The district’s stated goal is to preserve program viability, limit repeated student moves and leave capacity for projected housing growth in parts of the district.

Key points from the presentation

- Principles: Do not split neighborhoods where possible; use highways and thoroughfares as boundaries; create elementary→middle→high feeders; aim for each school to be at or below about 80% capacity so there is room for growth. (Dr. Hopkins)

- Projected growth and housing: The district displayed county-approved developments in the Lake Wylie area and named Lakeside Glen (about 450 homes) and Westport (about 842 homes) as two large approved subdivisions; staff said those two alone total roughly 1,300 homes and will be phased in over several years. District staff presented an estimate that those developments could generate about 259 elementary students for the district over the projection period (presented as the district’s growth model output and described by staff as an estimate based on county approvals and pupils-per-household calculations). (Matt Hoffman, Dr. Hopkins)

- Elementary changes: Liberty Hill Elementary was placed within what had been a large portion of the current Bethel zone and will cause a ripple effect across surrounding elementary attendance zones. Bethany’s zone was left unchanged. Several neighborhoods in the Bethel and Crowders Creek areas will shift to Liberty Hill or Bethel depending on the road geometry and population considerations. (Dr. Hopkins, Ross Hunter)

- Middle-school feeders: The plan creates a new Roosevelt Middle School that will pull students from portions of the current Clover Middle and Oak Ridge Middle zones; the district showed new feeder patterns in which Bethany, Larn/Kynard and Kynard elementary schools will feed Clover Middle, while Griggs Road, Bethel and Liberty Hill will feed Roosevelt Middle. Oak Ridge Middle would be primarily fed by Crowders Creek and Oak Ridge elementary. (Matt Hoffman, Dr. Hopkins)

- High-school split: The district proposed Lake Wylie High to serve much of the eastern side of the district east of Highway 49 and to follow a line that roughly tracks current geographic splits; staff projected first-year high-school enrollments using cohort carryover (seniors remaining at Clover High for the near term) and five-year growth projections. Staff said both high schools should fall in the 4A athletic classification under current realignment rules. (Matt Hoffman)

- Enrollment tables and methodology: Hoffman walked the board through tables showing current enrollment inside the new zones (taken 08/13/2025), a no-growth accommodation calculation (to account for employees and other current accommodations), and a five-year growth projection built from county-approved housing plus district-specific pupils-per-household factors generated by the district’s impact-fee vendor. The district said these projections have tracked closely with historical enrollment. (Matt Hoffman)

Public process and next steps

District staff said maps and address-level spreadsheets have been posted to the reassignment website and that the district will host three public forums: Sept. 4 at Oak Ridge Middle, Sept. 11 at CMS, and Sept. 16 at the Clover School District auditorium. Staff said the board will receive compiled feedback and consider a final decision on attendance lines on Sept. 22. (Stephanie Knott)

What the district emphasized

Staff repeatedly emphasized that the numbers shown are active-enrollment snapshots and that PowerSchool enrollment will continue to change through Labor Day; they urged families not to be alarmed by updates to the tables as registration and withdrawals occur. (Dr. Hopkins, Dr. Quinn)

Quotes from the meeting

“We embark upon an historical moment for our school district this evening,” Dr. Quinn said as she introduced the topic.

“These are based strictly on geography. No demographics involved, strictly on geography,” Dr. Hopkins said when describing the mapping standard.

“We will be using active numbers tonight and throughout this process. So as you see our tables updated, you may see the numbers change over the course of the next month. Please do not be alarmed by those changes,” Dr. Quinn added.

Ending

Board members asked several clarifying questions about neighborhood splits (Westport was noted as a specific exception where a highway divides the development) and about choice programs—Montessori will remain a choice program for ages 3–5 via lottery, the district said. The board did not vote on any boundary changes at the meeting; staff will accept public comment through the reassignment website and at the scheduled forums before the board votes on the maps on Sept. 22.