JCPS adding trailer to Pioneer Trail Elementary School

More elementary students in Jefferson City will soon have to take classes inside a trailer.

This coming school year, Jefferson City Public Schools will place a trailer at Pioneer Trail Elementary School because of increasing enrollment.

“Well we’re adding one trailer, bottom line because we’re out of space,” Superintendent Larry Linthacum said. “We want to make sure that we have positive classrooms that are conducive to learning and you know smaller class sizes is an issue that we’ve had there.”

In the 2015-2016 school year, kindergarten and first grade classes at Pioneer Trail Elementary averaged about 25 to 26 students per room. That just meets the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s standard classroom size. But it is much larger than the department’s “desirable” kindergarten through second grade classroom size of 17.

The west side of town has grown more over the last seven years than the district expected it to, according to Linthacum.

“You know Pioneer Trail, their first school year was the Fall of ’09, 2009,” Linthacum said. “And you know I wasn’t here at that time, but when they projected based on numbers and enrollment that it grew a little bit faster than they anticipated.”

Right now, the school district only has three existing trailers. Two are at the Nichols Career Center and one sits at East Elementary.

Linthacum said the school district’s lack of a bond issue, which means less taxpayer money, makes it difficult to have any major additions.

“We are considering a bond issue at some time,” he said. “We have not determined the time on that.”

But for now, Linthacum hopes the trailer is a temporary solution.

“We’re not looking at it as a long term solution,” he said. “I mean it’s possible, but that’s not the intent as we go through this.”

Growth is not just an issue at one school for JCPS. Linthacum said the long-range facilities committee has also recommended adding a second high school, an additional elementary school and redoing boundary lines in the future.