An idea long considered taboo by Overton County Board of Education may become the short-term solution to the overcrowding at Rickman Elementary School. “Zoning” is being brought into the forefront of the conversation as the School Board and the County Commission work on the problem.

Crowding at Rickman Elementary School and at Livingston Academy has once again pushed Overton County Board of Education to create more room. Knowing the county legislative body will likely have to be involved in the funding of any building plan, the school board is asking for input from the County Commission. That input has brought up two controversial possibilities, one that appears to be gaining consideration by the school system, despite being spoken only in whispers in the past, and another that the two entities appear to be in fundamental disagreement.

Overton County Mayor Ron Cyrus said redistricting, meaning zoning, is necessary to alleviate the crowding at Rickman.

“I think redistricting would fix it,” he said in an interview with the Overton County News. “That’s a word that the school board absolutely hates to talk about. In the times that we’re in, we need to look at things in an economical way.

“We can either redistrict the school system and have the children go where they’re supposed to go within their community, or we can piecemeal together and cobble together a few rooms here and a few more there. Does that fix the problem? It may fix it for a year or so, but a year from now or two years from now we’re going to come down this same road. We’re going to still owe for what we’ve just cobbled together, and yet we’re still going to have the problem three years down the road.”

In a school board work session held April 18, school board member Ray Smith asked how big Rickman School should be before it is too big, talking about how many more students Rickman has in comparison to other schools in the county.

Last year, A.H. Roberts Elementary had 532 students, Livingston Middle School had 436, and Rickman had 710. The next largest elementary was Allons at 309. This year, Rickman was up to 741, according to Cyrus, while A.H. Roberts was down to 513.

In a separate interview, Overton County Director of Schools Matt Eldridge said the trend in recent years is that the county’s schools have been losing students.

“Everyone’s lost in the last five years, except Hilham’s gained students and Rickman’s gained students. A.H., Livingston, Allons have all lost. Wilson’s maintained. Everyone else is lost.”

As for how big an elementary school should be, Director Eldridge said the state does not have a recommended size for elementary schools.

“As a whole, I think everyone likes a smaller school, truthfully,” he said.

Eldridge said that the state does have requirements for class sizes. Kindergarten through third grade is limited to 25 students per class, and cannot average more than 20 for the grade level.

“When you move up, 4th through 6th, it goes up five,” he said. “You can’t have over 30 in a classroom, and the average can’t be over 25. You move up 7th through high school, it moves up five more.”

“We’re in better shape than that right now.”

In the case of running out of room, the state calls for team teaching, sharing a classroom.

“It’s not an ideal situation,” Eldridge said. “Now, we’re not having to do that anywhere.”

In Tennessee, parents are allowed to register their children in any school in the county if they choose to drive the child to that school. This practice has been questioned as possibly exacerbating the problem at Rickman.