Hanover School Board considering addressing crowded classrooms with rezoning

HANOVER COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — The Hanover County School Board is considering new strategies to address the county's crowded classrooms -- one of which being adjusting the entire school district's zoning. The school board has tasked the consulting firm MGT to investigate how changing which schools its kids are assigned to attend for could help with crowding issues in the short term. Lance Richards, a representative of the consulting firm, spoke about how they will review the school district's boundaries in front of the school board on Tuesday, Oct. 8 “This is all very preliminary, I encourage everyone to understand that," said Richards during the school board meeting. "Please don't hang your hat on any of these numbers just yet." During the 2024-2025 school year, the school board approved adding two portable classrooms to Cool Spring Elementary School to provide immediate relief. At the time, the school was at 104% capacity with more than 800 students -- and even more are anticipated to enroll this year. “It is MGT's position that students should be in brick and mortar,” said Richards in regards to Cool Spring's portable classrooms.  Richards said that the consulting firm will draft proposals and return to Hanover in January to hold community forums with the school board to get feedback from community members. “It's very important that it's collaborative, that we get community input. We will also be doing community forums, but in those community forums we will share all of the information that we have,” Richards said.  A vote on any proposed boundary adjustments is expected to take place in April.