It has been a little more than a month since the 2009-2010 school year began for Fayette County Schools and the school system has seen only 20,934 students; that is 944 students less than their projected enrollment of 21,878. Rivers Elementary School, an 86,172 square foot facility that was built to house about 675 students is temporarily being used by the system’s Exceptional Children’s Department this year to house the county’s special education offices and programs. The school, which cost $9.9 million, was built using funds from a local bond issue.

Rivers Elementary will be the only school the county will have built in the next five years. According to Melinda Berry-Dreisbach, public information specialist, Fayette County Schools has no plans to build anymore schools for the next five years. Like many school systems in the metro area, Fayette County Schools were facing some budgetary concerns last year, and also heading into the current school year.

“The beginning of the school year had us facing more severe budgetary reductions than this time last year,” said Ms. Berry-Dreisbach. “The Governor instituted additional cuts to education just prior to the start of our school year. We were able to use $1.5 million of our budgeted contingency to partially offset the cuts along with further departmental budget reductions.”

Even with these budget cuts, Ms. Berry-Dreisbach said they did not have a teacher shortage this year. With much attention being paid to the budget concerns, Fayette schools did receive some good news at the beginning of the school year. SAT scores releases a few weeks ago showed that the 2009 graduating seniors posted a total average score of 1555, four points above last year’s average.

“We are extremely pleased that our score rose when both the state and national average scores dropped,” said Ms. Berry-Dreisbach.

“Fayette scored 95 points above the state and six points above the nation. Also, just this week, we were informed that 13 of our high school seniors have been named semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program.”

Despite the tough economic times that have affected the county, Fayette schools continue to make great gains in student achievement. One of the reasons could be the school system’s stand on not making budget cuts to instructional programs and keeping staff and faculty committed and focused on providing the best educational opportunities possible to students.