Lindbergh Schools’ aggressive enrollment growth is among the topics that will be discussed Saturday by the Board of Education.

The workshop meeting, which begins at 8 a.m. at the Administration Building, 4900 S. Lindbergh Blvd., also will include a discussion of the district’s preliminary budget for the 2013-2014 school year.

District officials are projecting “significant growth” in Lindbergh’s enrollment by the 2016-2017 school year. Based on conservative projections, enrollment will increase by 570 students with much of that growth at the elementary level.

“… There will be quite a discussion on growth because we’re about to enter — and we’re already there to some extent — but we’re going to increasingly enter a frustration zone in which many people are not happy with class size because we don’t have any new classrooms at the elementary level and the high school level — not a one. So everything’s going to have to go into existing classrooms,” Superintendent Jim Simpson told the Call.

In July 2011, the district closed on the $1.94 million purchase of the Dressel School building, which sits on roughly 10 acres at 10255 Musick Road.

Dressel School currently houses the Lindbergh Eager Achievers Program for gifted students, Parents as Teachers, the Lindbergh Athletic Association and the Lindbergh Activities Office.

“We’ve used Dressel for the spillover,” the superintendent said. “But starting next (school) year, all of Dressel is full. So no more relief valve with Dressel. The board’s going to have to think about where we’re going to need to go with that … Is there any move we want to make in the next 24 months to try to handle and address this growth because the pressure, the frustration and the stress is going to build, build, build.”

Parents already have contacted school board members and administrators with concerns about increasing class sizes, Simpson said.

As the Lindbergh community ages and its housing stock turns over to young families with children wanting to locate in the district, he predicts the growth will continue for the foreseeable future.

“We’re going to be growing for easily well over, maybe two decades …,” Simpson said, who recommends against increasing class sizes to accommodate the growth.

“… You have Lindbergh housing at a premium. You have a host of families constantly trying to relocate into the district to get a quality education. It makes the Lindbergh community vibrant. It brings in quality families. In many cases, these families are young people who attended Lindbergh and now they have young families. They’re saying, ‘I want to go back,'” he said.

“And when you have all of that, you don’t want to short-circuit it by making some really detrimental moves (such as increasing class sizes) that turn that kind of progress off. So the board will have to be really wrestling with those kinds of things …,” he added.

By taking increased class sizes off the table, the only solution to the expected enrollment growth, Simpson said, is adding more classrooms and teachers.

“… That’s how you handle growth. There is no other way to handle it. You can redefine class size, but that’s extremely unwise …,” he said.

A typical elementary school enrollment is 500 students, and the projection of 570 more students over the next four years exceeds that number.

Given that, the projected enrollment growth will require the Lindbergh Board of Education to consider opening a sixth elementary school at some point in the near future, according to Simpson.

“… If you decide to build a new school building to ease this pain, then you have to decide when it’s on the ballot … Then it’s a minimum of 36 months before you cut the ribbon,” he said. “You’ve got a year of codes — hard to believe, but there it is. When you pass something, you say, ‘We’ll just jump in and start building it’ — no, no, no. You’d be lucky in 12 months to have all the codes in your pocket. So, one year to plan it and get the codes, and then two years to build. That’s it. There’s no way around it. You can’t make it faster.

“And so, when you do the math on that, you’re going to have a lot of years that you’re going to have to be swamped with growth before you can even pull the relief on it. So the board will be talking about that June 1 … I’ll be looking forward to hearing ideas and comments from the board because it is a brainstorming session.”

Opening a new elementary school would require voter approval of a bond issue to fund construction and an increase in the district’s operational tax-rate to hire additional teachers, according to Simpson.

“… Because it’s growth, you have to have more teachers. It’s not a redistribution of teachers. You’re handling hundreds of more students. So to keep your class sizes in check, you’re going to have to hire faculty. There are synergies, yes, so it’s not like you have to hire the entire building new,” he said, estimating a new building would require roughly 25 new full-time teachers.

Because district officials anticipate the enrollment growth to continue, Simpson said they would need to plan for additional classroom space beyond a new elementary school building.

“… So you’ve got to somehow find a way to build some excess capacity in the other elementaries so that you’re not going to be hurting (for space) within a reasonable time frame …,” he said.

Though the Board of Education approved the purchase of the Dressel campus in 2011, the building presents problems, Simpson said, particularly in meeting Americans With Disabilities Act requirements.

The dilemma the board faces is whether the structure will have to be renovated or razed to construct a new, modern elementary school.

At some point, board members will have to make that decision, Simpson said.

“… The architects and engineers have already told us they have concerns about what they consider equal costs, and that means the cost of modernizing the old Dressel and bringing that into what we need may be exactly equal to building new …”

“We’re after all kinds of ideas. Right now, it’s the idea stage … We’re throwing everything out on the table trying to find, as good stewards of organizations do, we just try to find the very best plan that fits our needs and the needs of our community and the resources that we have available to do those improvements …,” he said.

No final decisions are expected to be made Saturday, according to Simpson, who said the discussion by the board is just the beginning of the conversation with the community about Lindbergh’s future needs.