SAN ANTONIO – It’s the first day of school and Susann Richard’s classroom is nowhere near complete: empty, with little decoration.
“This room needs a little color. It needs some desks, and the computers are not set up,” she said.
Armed with a stapler, she plans to change that, stapling borders around a new memo board for her yet-to-be-announced class of 8-year-olds.
Richard isn’t procrastinating—after all, school already started today. She is a temporary teacher brought in at the last minute to handle the bigger-than-expected class of third graders.
"Of course, you got to have name tags, so the students know where to go. This will be a brand-new day for them tomorrow when they show up,” said Richard.
Northside Ind pendent School District expects more than 2,400 new students in the district this year. Eighteen of them showed up at Leon Springs Elementary School, causing what many schools call an “overflow.”
“The attendance secretary, the registrars, are the ones who are monitoring the call-ins," said Leon Springs Elementary principal Kathy Dodge-Clay. "We call them "call-ins": where we are looking at the numbers of how many students are on our waiting list."
Dr. Dodge-Clay said the district was ready with a temp teacher now and plans to have two teachers join the staff this week: One to teach third grade and another, first grade—which also saw an increase.
Northside officials say it’s a problem across the northern and western portions of Bexar County.
“Part of it is because of the desirable place to live, and NISD schools, in general, are desirable to parents. And this school in particular because it has such a rich history of excellence,” she said.
NISD officials said two more elementary schools are planned to relieve Leon Springs’ growing population in a district that has opened 38 new schools just in the last decade.
